Six Key Steps To Developing A Record Retention Policy

Businesses in all industries have records that they use in the daily course of operations, especially in today's age of automation. With more documents being created and stored every day, it's important to have some sort of system, practice or policy in place to manage those documents. This is particularly true if you operate in one of the more heavily regulated industries such as healthcare.

When it comes to putting together a document retention policy, there are six key steps that a business needs to go through. As there is no one-size-fits-all, you have to tailor these policies to each individual business.

STEP 1: Identify Types of Records & Media

The first key step is to identify the documents that you have and the media in which they're stored. Documents don't include just original documents but also reproductions and copies of documents, which could have the same effect and force at law. It also would include documents that are stored in electronic