Record Retention
kbnortin
9 Posts
We are a small not for profit community mental health agency. We are in the process of creating a record retention policy. In a discussion in our management meeting a record rention specialist stated that if you have a record retention policy and keep records longer than the retention policy states you are actually more at risk if you are ever called into court. The thinking is that if you are called into court and the record has been destroyed then the burden of of proof is on the other party. But if you still have the record then it can be used against you. Has anyone else ever heard of this?
Comments
Record retention can be argued both ways. You need to look at your business needs and compare those needs to the laws that currently exist.
Sometimes it is hard to make the right call. Being sued and being in discovery is never easy, regardless of whether you have the documentation or not. At times it is better to not have the documentation (if it could hurt you) and at others, it is helpful to have it because it would help you, even if it was outdated. From a legal HR standpoint, you want to make sure you keep employment and payroll records for a specific amount of time based on ERISA, COBRA, Title VII, etc. There are times, in our case, where we keep the information longer than any one law states, mostly information that we feel could protect us.
What some companies learned from Enron was to not save too much documentation. Because you can't start destroying it at discovery time. To protect the company you need to have a standard schedule that is followed. Most companies are coming up with document retention plans based on their business needs. Only someone who has analyzed your specific business needs could say for certain whether you are better off destroying the information based on the legal dates or whether some of it should be kept longer.
Sarbanes-Oxley has components that address shredding records after notification of a legal action in which those records might be useful even if you were not required to retain those records at the time you were notified.
We destroy our old records regularly, in compliance with all relevant laws, as much for keeping the volume of paper manageable as anything else.
Off the top of my head, I can't think of any that are required to be in hard format but just as soon as I say that someone will come up with one! [:P]
In other words, you need to check the regs surrounding the particular document you are considering storing electronically, but for the most part I believe you can store electronically.