Hi Amanda,
You have already received some very good advice from seasoned
practitioners.  I will suggest that you start your process by scheduling a
meeting with a high level member of each functional area of your
organization.  Individual meetings are preferable because it is difficult
to find a time for 2 or more people to meet.  At this point don't mix
people from different functional areas.

Because you are new to the organization this will help you start building
relationships across the organization as well as identifying key laws and
regulations that apply to your organization.  Plan your meetings with
specific questions/discussions about the department, how they currently
manage their records and the laws/regulations that they are required to
follow.  Over the years I have learned that most departments/functions
already know the key laws that affect their operations.  These meetings
will also help you establish the reason used for selecting the retention
times for the RRS, which may be based on operational, fiscal, legal or
historical needs.  Legal requirements usually trump the others, but
sometimes there are legitimate reasons for operational or fiscal to exceed
the legal requirements.

Start with the functional areas that have responsibilities across the
organization (i.e. legal, compliance, tax, audit, finance, security,
safety, human resources etc.) then move to the operational areas (i.e.
manufacturing, marketing, sales, operations etc.)

As you complete each area you can scan the sources mentioned by other
ListServers to look for gaps or updated versions of laws and regulations.
This will take considerable time and is not a quick fix.  If you find
yourself in a time crunch - as I did many years ago - you may need to
purchase a database that provides the key laws and regs that apply to the
management of records.  If you do that, please reverse my recommendations
and follow up with meetings to confirm what you have learned from the data
base.

The most important thing you can do this first year as the Records
Administrator is to become acquainted with all the functional areas and
work with them as a team.  You can help them - and they can help you.
That's a win/win for everyone.

Mary

Mary W. Haider, MBA, CRM
Records & Information Manager and Consultant
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865-983-1371

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