What records management duties can a manager delegate to staff and which ones can't be delegated?

A useful rule guides every delegation question in records management: a manager can delegate tasks, but not accountability. Day-to-day work can be assigned to staff, while responsibility for the program’s outcomes stays with leadership.

What Can Be Delegated

Most operational and routine duties are well suited to staff, provided they receive clear instructions, training, and tools. These commonly include:

• Filing, indexing, and classification of records into the approved file plan.
• Applying retention rules by tagging records to the correct category and flagging items as eligible for disposition.
• Carrying out disposition actions (transfer, destruction, or archiving) once they have been reviewed and authorized.
• Routine maintenance such as scanning, metadata entry, quality checks, and tracking record locations.
• Responding to internal requests and locating records for audits, litigation holds, or access requests.
• Monitoring and reporting on compliance metrics so issues surface early.

Delegating these tasks builds capacity and keeps the program running, but each should be governed by written procedures so the work is consistent and auditable.

What Cannot Be Delegated

Certain duties represent the manager’s or organization’s accountability and remain with leadership even when staff perform supporting work:

• Overall accountability for an effective records program and for compliance with applicable laws and policies.
• Approving the records schedule and policy — deciding what is a record, how long it is kept, and how it is disposed of.
• Authorizing disposition, especially destruction, which requires a documented, accountable decision.
• Allocating resources and ensuring adequate staffing, training, and systems.
• Final responsibility for litigation holds and for sensitive or legally significant decisions.

In short, the judgment, authority, and answerability stay at the top; the execution can be shared.

Making Delegation Work

Effective delegation pairs clear assignment with oversight. Document who does what, train staff on procedures, and retain evidence of approvals and disposition actions. Even fully delegated tasks should be periodically reviewed, because the organization remains answerable for the result. For more on roles and governance, see the Information Governance topic hub.