ABSTRACT
Policies have many different titles, according to organization or country. A policy, for instance, can take the form of a manual or a handbook, comprising the same objectives, setting out a standardized way of working-in others words, what people should do rather than how they think is best or easiest. ‘What a person should do’ is called a policy, while ‘how it should be done’ is called a procedure. A policy provides the overall framework for how activities will be carried out: it instructs and informs people what to do and how to do it. Policies and procedures are key to a well-run and well-structured
organization. However, it is often the case that many business functions within an organization will disseminate policy and procedural information merely to customize it to their own departmental style and function. This type of non-system merely results in duplication, conflict and increased workload, and it often contributes to poor decision-making. The key to a successful policy is to have only one, and to get it right
first time and not complicate it. If the policy is kept simple, it will be easy for users to comply. The retention schedule is the policy that has been structured based
on the audit evaluation of the organization’s records, and details the important information that an organization must be able to access over the entire lifecycle of a document in order to meet the needs and legal obligations of the business. The fundamental purpose of a records management policy is to:
Meet the legal and security requirements and standards protection, storage and retrieval of the organization’s
Optimize the use of space. Minimize the cost of records retention. Destroy time-expired information in accordance with the schedule in
an appropriate, secure manner.
