This may be an obvious question, but since I seem to always be coming
into records from the back door I seem to miss some stuff (sometimes I
feel like that guy in the movie Memento, who had no short term memory
due to a head injury -- all I know is what I'm doing now and not
necessarily what lead up to this point .... but I digress).
 
Our company has traditionally been very decentralized. Our corporate
office does not tell the divisions how to go about building houses or
how they should set up their systems, accounting, records or otherwise.
We have no set file plan; each department in each division pretty much
sets up their own system, and I doubt any of them have actually
documented their file structure. Because of this our retention schedule
is more towards the functional, "big bucket" style so it can more easily
accommodate 18 different ways of doing business.  What I am noticing is
that some employees just can't figure out where their files fit into the
retention schedule. When they ask me, even I sometimes have difficulty
because I don't have a thorough grasp of the purpose of each document
that may be produced. I'm thinking that IF we had a file plan, I could
easily relate each item on the file plan to a particular record series.
I'm also thinking that once we actually start managing our e-docs, we
must have a file plan. I don't think ERMS or EDMS systems can work
without one ... or can they? There seem to be those that believe we can
just full-text search everything, therefore not needing any kind of
pre-determined structure. 
 
So here's my question ... Are file plans the only way to go or do many
companies manage records just fine without a formal file plan? Are file
plans "old school"? For those that have them and have more than one
location, do you have one single structure for the whole company or a
separate file plan for each location? Pros and cons of each approach?
 
A secondary issue is that because we don't mandate what each division
does, we don't have a standard picture of what constitutes a "complete"
file. I'm thinking that I need to create a guideline that tells users
what, at the minimum, MUST be captured. Right now our retention schedule
describes typical documents to give people an idea of what belongs to
each series. I could have the descriptions of record series in the
retention schedule delineate minimum required documentation, but
wouldn't it be easier to do in a file plan?
 

 

Nolene Sherman | Director of Records Management | Standard Pacific Homes
| 949-727-9360 | FAX 949-789-3379 | [log in to unmask]

 

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