Box Retention Challenges: Managing Complex Retention Rules

Box retention is typically viewed as a line item concern on the balance sheet. More boxes equals more storage costs. When costs spur organizations to act to reduce retained physical files, however, they realize there are more challenges - and risks - to physical storage than first meets the eye. Solutions feel abstract or impossible to achieve, yet the need to effectively govern physical files and reduce spend remains. Enter defensible disposition using golden rules. Our friends at filerskeepers happen to be experts on this topic, and were generous enough to combine their knowledge with ours for this blog.  

The Challenges of Box Retention 

Complexity

Organizations with locations in more than one state or country deal with complex - and often competing - retention rules. This complexity is not absent in digital file retention, but physical files come with additional complications (i.e. does it matter where this box is located geographically? Does this law apply to all our physical files, or just components?). Extreme variations in policies across locations means the answers to these questions can be diametrically opposed, leaving organizations paralyzed. 

Volume 

The sheer volume of regulations is hard to keep up with, but the volume of content is as challenging to manage. Boxes are shipped and then forgotten. Accessing them becomes difficult - and in some cases, costly - when they move off site. 

Knowledge Gaps 

To make matters worse, lack of ownership or improperly managed inventories means companies don’t know what they have in some cases. Not knowing what’s in boxes, or the true cost of keeping them, means organizations often can’t get rid of them even when they want to. 

Cost

There’s cost in storage, but there’s also cost in knowing what’s in the boxes in the first place, especially when inventory records are missing. Organizations can’t afford to “flip the lid” on every box. In some instances there are unexpected costs that arise when trying to access physical boxes that have been stored offsite. 

Fear 

Finally, fear stops organizations from looking. Fear of the cost it will incur to get physical files under control, certainly, but often more so fear that they will do it wrong and provoke unnecessary risk. Both over and under retaining are common in information governance, leading to mountains of data and files that should long have been destroyed, or information that was disposed of but should have been kept. 

What’s Changed in Box Retention 

Since 2020, two major cultural factors have upped the ante on having well-governed physical files: the rise of large language models (LLMs) and the Covid-19 pandemic. Both have made companies more concerned with what information they have - and physical files are top of mind. 

AI 

When large language models hit the scene at the end of 2022, suddenly every organization wanted a piece of the AI pie to improve how they worked. Savvy organizations quickly realized, however, that the more “noise” an LLM is trained on, the worse outputs it produces. Suddenly it became imperative that anyone building an AI tool train it on only the best data. But to do so, they had to know where that data lived. And if that data only lived in physical form, it had to be found and digitized. 

Legal Shifts 

Covid-19 changed the way we work. Almost all knowledge workers were forced into digital-only environments. Law makers began to realize that information governance laws had to change to keep up. It no longer made sense to require physical files - as had been the case in many locales - and in some instances, law makers went so far as to reverse the policy entirely and began requiring digital copies of all files rather than giving an option. 

Designing Defensible Disposition for Boxes and Physical Files 

AI and legal shifts - in addition to concerns about cost and risk - have put physical files top of mind for organizations. But the challenges they face in getting their boxed storage effectively governed have left these same organizations uncertain about the best way forward. filerskeepers and Future in Tech (FiT) can help businesses of all types create defensible disposition practices that mitigate risk and contain costs. 

Tame Complexity with Golden Standards 

To get control of physical files, Wanne Pemmelaar, CEO of filerskeepers, and his team guide organizations in creating what they call “golden standards.” At their most basic, golden standards are a set of guiding principles for disposition that move businesses from paralysis to action by creating rules that work most of the time. And then delineating and following exceptions when necessary, but working to minimize these exceptions. 

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It starts by understanding what you have. And if the answer is “we have no idea”, begin with these steps. 

1. Think like a detective. Organizations know more than they think they do. Start asking questions that give you basic information: what years are these boxes from? What departments are they from? What was that department working on at the time? Who was working on it? 

Oftentimes, businesses also know what boxes don’t include, because all files of a certain type are always digitized or shredded, or both. All of this gives a starting point to knowing what you’re dealing with. 

2. Make risk based assessments. What do you know about these boxes as it relates to timeframe and retention schedules? For instance, if your organization disposes of anything - physical or digital - older than 20 years, you know all those boxes can go. Look too, at when you ship boxes to storage. Is it when the matter’s closed? When it’s been closed for a certain period of time? All these can give you clues to what defensible disposition looks like (without having to open every box). 
3. Perform random checks. Lastly, you’ll want to perform random checks to test your theories. Take a small subset of the boxes you have and crack the lid. You’ll either confirm what you know, or discover something unexpected. Either way, you’ll have better information to make defensible disposition decisions. 

Once it’s clear what’s there, organizations design their golden standards and flag exceptions. This is where FiT’s information governance software comes in. FiT’s system keeps complex retention rules from becoming complex checklists - or worse, living only in the head of one employee. It alerts the right people at the right time of the need to take action, whether that’s a “simple deletion” or the need for closer human review to determine the correct next step. 

Complex retention rules aren’t going anywhere. And neither are physical files for most organizations. Building defensible disposition and retention schedules, and then putting those schedules into governance software with the sophistication to enforce them, is how organizations get control of their boxes, and the costs and risks associated with them. 

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