Document Retention Policy – Best Practices

Document Retention Policy (DRP) is important and having a clearly defined policy could yield three benefits for businesses and organizations, which could be enumerated as:

1. Efficiency;

2. Safety;

3. Peace of mind.


With the stated benefits, the DRP establishes and describes the management of records in a physical as well as electronic format. Also, locating key documents when they are needed is easier and more efficient comes under Document Retention Policy. In any event related to investigation or lawsuit, a well-drafted & implemented DRP demonstrated a legitimate and neutral purpose for destroying documents. Moreover, it also ensures that the organization abides by Govt. compliance standards with regards to this policy. There are several laws and regulations in place concerning document retention, including but not limited to tax audit procedures, employment laws, and mandates by concerned authorities. In addition to these federal laws, there may be numerous state and local document retention provisions that apply specifically to specific businesses and organizations.

The first & foremost consideration for any Document Retention Policy is to know the period of keeping certain documents. The best practices of document retention policy for most common documents will help to get it started & implemented for a specific business or organization. These are not all-encircling document retention timelines, self initiated research must be done to find out the guidelines related to the one’s business or organization needs to follow.

A DRP brief out how company employees are probably able to manage the company’s electronic and physical data from creation through destruction. Several reasons backed the implementation of DRP. As per the law, if a company's litigation hold obligation to preserve documents is triggered by potential litigation, a document retention policy can help it more efficiently. If documents relevant to a lawsuit or any government investigation were destroyed by the company having a company-wide document retention policy may help demonstrate either to a government agency or judge that the company had a legitimate purpose for the document destruction. Evidence stating clear and consistently enforced DRP, enacted for valid purposes, will go a long way to convince the court in the favor that destruction of the documents was reasonable.

Business efficiency is widely enhanced in a few different ways. Locating key documents quickly when they are needed is the most important benefit to an enforced DRP. The well-registered documents result in less time wasted on searching for and locating documents, and would rather spend the precious time in performing higher quality work. A consistently followed DRP aids as a safety precaution, particularly when litigation seems forthcoming. Lacking critical documents can have a real effect on the outcome of any litigation. To put it for better understanding, proving any breach of the contract is only possible if you find the contract in question. Hence, the importance of DRP or its benefits come into the picture as:

- It can assist to determine the documents that must be retained and for how long they must be stored.

- On the contrary, unnecessarily retaining archives can make a company defenseless to claims based on old and trivial documents.

To be sure if the firm’s DRP abides by compliance standards, it is important to check the local laws before beginning. There is a high probability that for DRP, state and federal laws differ.