What are an individual employee's day-to-day records management responsibilities, and what are they personally accountable for?

Records management is often thought of as the job of a records officer or an archives department. In practice, the system only works because of what individual employees do every day. Every person who creates, receives, or handles information in the course of their work is a participant in the records lifecycle, and each carries a share of personal responsibility for doing it well.

Day-to-Day Responsibilities

Most of an employee’s recordkeeping duties are routine and built into normal work:

• Recognize records. Understand that a record is information created or received in the course of business, regardless of format — email, documents, spreadsheets, chat messages, photos, or signed forms. Distinguish records from transitory material and personal notes.
• Capture and file correctly. Save records into approved systems and shared repositories rather than personal drives, local folders, or private inboxes, so they can be found and managed.
• Apply the right labels. Title, classify, and where required mark records (for example, for sensitivity or access) according to organizational policy.
• Follow retention rules. Keep records for as long as the applicable schedule requires, and dispose of them only when authorized — never destroy something early or hold it indefinitely “just in case.”
• Protect information. Safeguard records against unauthorized access, loss, and improper sharing, and report any suspected loss or breach.
• Honor holds. Suspend normal disposition immediately when a legal hold, audit, or records request applies.

What Employees Are Personally Accountable For

Accountability means an individual can be expected to answer for their own recordkeeping actions. Employees are generally accountable for:

• Creating and maintaining adequate, accurate records of the work they perform.
• Not destroying, altering, or removing records outside of authorized procedures.
• Complying with retention schedules and disposition authorizations.
• Promptly producing or preserving records when a request, hold, or investigation arises.

Failing in these duties can expose both the individual and the organization to legal risk, lost institutional knowledge, and damaged public trust. When in doubt, employees should keep the record and ask their records or compliance contact rather than guess.

Sound recordkeeping is a shared, everyday discipline — not an afterthought. To explore the broader principles behind these duties, see the fundamentals topic hub.