Sexy RM? Six Ways to Get Your Program Noticed

Having trouble getting head office approval for your Records Management program? Hard to get management and executives to listen? Not getting support from IT?

You aren’t alone. Our clients and colleagues often say that one of the biggest challenges they face is raising awareness of records management within their organization. We are often asked: is there a way to make RM sexier? Well, we are working on it, but in the meantime the good news is that the many compliance issues and legal cases making headlines is helping to increase the profile of records management at all levels. To help you capitalize on this, we’ve put together a few things you can do to get your records management program on the front burner, and keep it there.

Typically, RM departments have limited financial and personnel resources, and are always working against the clock. For these reasons, it is critical for an RM manager to have a strategy for furthering the goals of their RM program. The goals and strategy should be aligned with the direction of the organization, and should be flexible to accommodate changes in the organization. The plan should not only be a roadmap for the future, but reflect the RM program as it exists.

This way, key decision makers have a better idea not only of what you need, but how it will benefit the organization, and when resources do become available, you can hit the ground running without wasting time planning.

The basic fact is that for any RM program to work, you need to earn the trust of the people that your program touches, and the best way to do this is to communicate with them. It is essential that you organize meetings with individual department heads to understand their concerns and make the case for the benefits of your program. A less formal approach can be just as effective too. Often, casual conversations with department managers can reveal document and information management issues, even if they don’t recognize them as such. This is a good opportunity to point out how RM can help, and plan next steps. Also, if you see come across a story that touches on the risks associated with poor RM practices, like an e-discovery legal case, circulate it to key decision makers in an email with a link.

People in any organization work hard to produce the documents they use and become very attached to them. It is therefore often quite difficult for a records manager to convince them to destroy or archive records as the program requires. If you are familiar with their records and their processes, it is easier to put them into context with other departments and the organization as a whole. This context is a great help in promoting the adoption of standardized classifications and retentions schedules.

As well, if you work in a large organization and have the resources, you can assign one person from your group to each department or area so that they can learn about the department’s business process and records generation. This gives each department a dedicated RM support person and further facilitates participation from that group.

Traditionally, IT groups have seen themselves as completely separate from records management. However, both groups share a common goal with respect to the information assets of an organization, and highlighting this can break down traditional barriers. The increasing adoption of electronic documents provides a common starting point for dialogue. Also, the IT trend toward ECM projects is a useful entry point, because many ECM principles are simply standard RM best practices. Records Managers can be a huge help in ECM projects, especially in the planning stages, and if the opportunity is there, getting involved can help bridge the gap and lead to closer cooperation between the two groups.

People become frustrated when they don’t understand the processes associated with RM. Often records managers are fighting entrenched corporate culture. Educating them on the basics of records management, with examples of how it will ultimately help them and the company, can ease this frustration and pave the way for change. Once staff understand why information has to be processed this way, and see the benefit of doing so, it becomes easier to incorporate into the work process. Whenever you are teaching, remember to keep it short, relevant and to the point. Incorporating RM policies in employee orientation is an excellent idea.

In the beginning of any program, you may feel like it’s an uphill battle to get your program noticed, but over time this does get easier. The metrics and hard benefits of records management are there, and with the proper presentation, they will eventually catch the attention of key decision makers.

If you want more information on how to raise awareness of records management at your organization, we'd love to hear from you. Visit TAB Academy for more information on RM courses that provide Records Management personnel with the training and skills they need to meet today’s information challenges.