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Bad Record Management
If paperwork is the bane of any business owner, then poor record management is their worst nightmare. If mismanaged, records can become a detriment and a drain on your business, both financially by wasting employee’s time and potential loss of data. Here are 7 of the ways your business can suffer from bad record management.
Organising and Retrieving Records
Time spent looking for disorganized files is time wasted.
If not organised in a logical and foolproof method, employees can lose hours looking through files that could potentially have been lost. Records should be stored in the same way across all locations to prevent confusing and unclear storage methods.
Files should be organised in such a way that important and often accessed files are easy and quick to find, without sacrificing the access of infrequently used files.
Damage prevention
Are your files stored in a space protected from floods, fire and burglary?
Rented spaces are often not secured against these threats; important information should be stored as such to prevent irreversible damage to your business. Though many of these spaces are cost effective ways to store your records the potential damage to your business is not worth the savings gained.
Is Your Space Humidity Controlled?
Offices usually have air conditioning, but rented storage spaces often lack this.
What might not be a problem for office stored records; those stored in a rented space are likely at risk of becoming mouldy, among being at risk of fire, burglary and flooding. Mouldy records can be illegible or completely destroyed as well as being a potential health risk for those who handle them. A professional record management company will have regulators in place to prevent these kinds of issues, as well as knowing how to properly handle mouldy records, preventing your employees from being exposed to the risk.
Cost of storage
Renting storage is costly, especially for a growing business.
For a small business, renting space may seem ineffective, but as the business grows and its running time increases, more space will eventually be needed. Bigger businesses need even more storage space, even more, funds dedicated to storage. Storage spaces don’t account for time spent taking files to the site, organising them and retrieving them whilst also not considering the possibility of having to upgrade and move all the previously organised files to a new site.
Chain of Custody
Without records of who has accessed and viewed or moved files, there is little hope of finding a leak or a missing file.
Having a system in place to manage access to records will leave a trail should a leak occur or a file goes missing. A professional records management company will ensure all of this is taken care of in an accurate fashion.
Record Security
Rented and workplace storage are not secure.
Should records be stored at the workplace, the accessibility of the files will be greatly increased, whether accidental or not. It ensures easy access to not only your employees but anyone who has access to the area and although rented spaces will reduce the number of people who could potentially accesses the files, it is still not as secure and could lead to security breaches.
Disposal of Records
What good are all these methods if files are not properly disposed of?
Not only is proper disposal of records beneficial to your amount of storage space, but it’s also a highly monitored law to do so. Ensuring your records are disposed of by reputable Paper shredding services that follow these laws will prevent leakage of records by even professional thieves. Leakage of data can be catastrophic to a business by not only fines but also loss of reputability.