Dustin,

In one word: Anxiety.  

This is what some folks feel when it comes to destroying documents
because it means that they will have to explain or develop an answer to
"why" the document is not there when they are doing their job. It is
generally above their pay grade to make a business decision regarding
the core business process they work on.  Their answer is to hold onto
documents even though it is against the "rules" because the consequences
are less for holding the records than changing/disturbing the business
process. 


Solution A: Give them records series specific answers on how to handle
requests for dispositioned documents. 

One suggestion which has served me well is to provide these people with
prepackaged answers for how to handle the various situations when the
information has been destroyed. In many cases you will have to dig deep
into the business process that the person is using and create a set of
modifications to the business process to handle the cases when the
process requires information that has been dispositioned.  

In one case, one of our customers had been keeping documents decades
beyond the destruction date in order to handle the extremely rare case
of when a customer would come back for a new loan and the original loan
had been in default or some other negative issue. In their attempt to be
customer centric they were keeping all information permanently: "just in
case".  It was a question of the cost of keeping and managing all of the
information for decades vs the cost of making a business decision. For
the record series in question, you add a Procedure to the Existing
Customer Loan Process of "If Missing Information is older than 15 years,
assume original loan never existed, continue as New Customer Loan
Request. If Information requested is < 15 years, send to Dept X to use
Process Z to assess customer".  This gives a regular employee documented
procedure to follow.  Their anxiety will most likely disappear as should
hoarding.


Solution B: Make the consequences worse to hold onto the records.


Regards,


Tom Utiger
Data Empowerment Group

www.recordsreadiness.com - Enterprise-wide Records Management Training

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