Emily, we're an economic development corporation, "neither fish nor fowl", but perhaps generally similar to your situation (http://www.nycedc.com/about-nycedc/history).
We're also an Outlook/Exchange shop with Symantec Enterprise Vault for "archiving".
Our retention policy on email is that everything in the Inbox older than 90 days gets deleted, UNLESS the user moves/copies the message to a folder with longer retention (meaning, "until the employee is terminated, or decides on her own to delete the message").
I'm fortunate that our General Counsel, to whom the Records Management Department reports, is aware of the value of/need for records management.
Hope this helps.
Best regards, and good luck!
Fred
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Frederic J. Grevin, Vice-President
Records Management Department
New York City Economic Development Corporation • www.nycedc.com
[log in to unmask] • w. 212.312.3903 • mobile 917.510.3016 • f. 212.618.5722