Records Manager

Records managers design and implement the systems, policies, and procedures that govern how an organisation creates, captures, maintains, uses, and disposes of its records. This includes both physical records (paper files, drawings, photographs, microfilm) and — increasingly — born-digital records (emails, databases, shared drives, electronic document management systems, and cloud-stored content). The role sits at the intersection of information management, legal compliance, and operational efficiency.

Core professional activities include developing and implementing records retention schedules — the authoritative document that determines how long each category of record must be kept (driven by legal requirements, limitation periods, regulatory obligations, and business need) and what happens at the end of that period (destruction, transfer to an archive, or permanent retention). Records managers also design and implement classification schemes and filing structures, manage the organisation's EDRMS (Electronic Document and Records Management System, such as OpenText, SharePoint with records management configuration, or HP Records Manager), and train staff in records management practice.

A large and growing strand of the work involves digital records management and digital preservation: managing the migration of records between IT systems, ensuring the long-term accessibility of electronic records, implementing email management policies, and contributing to data governance frameworks alongside data protection officers and IT teams. Freedom of Information (FOI) compliance depends heavily on well-managed records — records managers often support the FOI officer by locating and retrieving responsive records.

Professional body for records managers is the Information and Records Management Society (IRMS). The international standard is ISO 15489 (Records Management), and records managers in the public sector must be familiar with the Lord Chancellor's Code of Practice on Records Management (issued under the Freedom of Information Act 2000).

Every organisation — public sector, NHS, legal, financial, charitable, and corporate — generates records that must be managed in accordance with legal requirements. Data protection law (UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018), the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the Public Records Act 1958, sector-specific regulations (NHS, financial services, legal), and the Limitation Act 1980 all impose retention and disposition obligations that require professional records management to fulfil. Regulatory risk from poor records management — data breaches, failure to provide FOI responses, loss of critical business information — is growing, not shrinking.

The explosion in digital information — email volumes, collaboration platforms, cloud storage — has increased rather than reduced the complexity of records management. Digital preservation, migration planning, and metadata management require specialist expertise that is in genuinely short supply. Public sector organisations are consistently audited on records management standards by The National Archives, and NHS trusts are increasingly scrutinised following high-profile failures to retain patient records appropriately.

Morning: attending a project team meeting for the organisation's forthcoming cloud migration to Microsoft 365 — advising on the records management configuration for SharePoint, the retention label taxonomy to be applied, and the governance policy needed before go-live. Afternoon: completing the annual review of the records retention schedule, updating legal hold periods following a change in employment law limitation periods, and coordinating the destruction of a batch of paper files whose retention period has expired — completing the certificate of destruction for the audit trail. End of day: supporting a colleague who has received a Freedom of Information request requiring retrieval of project correspondence from three years ago.