The 3 Principles Of Document Stewardship

While it can seem as though the digitization of everything has left us free from paperwork, that’s not necessarily the full truth. We still need to document and measure everything that takes place within our business, only hosting this vital data is perhaps quicker, more secure, and more reliable now. Document stewardship involves the management and oversight of documents to ensure their proper creation, storage, retrieval, and eventual disposal.

While this is great in effect, especially for our paper usage, it’s also true that we need to learn a range of practices and measures to help us care for our digital document stewardship in the best possible sense.

This also raises interesting questions over access privileges and security, which perhaps were as easy as a locked filing cabinet beforehand. So, how can you develop the best practices when measuring the stewardship of your documents, and furthermore, how can you train your staff to abide by these protocols in the best possible manner?

Some of your staff may have similar skills learned from other enterprises, but how you like things being done may be vastly different to another firm. So – what are the universal principles to keep in mind? Let’s consider:

Correct Access Privileges

It’s important to set the correct access privileges for your documents, particularly those that are being archived. Take the time to understand the ins and outs of your digital system. For instance, it might be that documents, when placed in a synced folder that offers different permission access to the files themselves, are overwritten and less secure than you would hope. Understanding this web of storage and shared access, as well as the power you grant certain employee accounts in your system, can help you ensure ‘for your eyes only’ is more than just a spy cliche.

Thorough Backup

Backing up your documents thoroughly is essential, as is evidenced by the great work recordrs.com is known for. This is especially true if you steward documents with legal and personal importance, such as medical records. Thoroughly backing these up and encrypting them in the best possible manner, while also remaining accessible to the professionals who need them, is perhaps one of the most important stewardship tasks you could take care of. With the mentioned service providing a cohesive, integrated platform for secure, reliable archiving, you can be sure that even the most sensitive documents are backed up and safe.

Security

Security is also an essential component of document stewardship. You must ensure they are protected, in more place than one, and free from risk despite the ill-intentions of those who seek to scupper your cybersecurity. Security must also be internal as well, such as ensuring staff with negative intentions are unable to access or subvert your most important documents. This might sound odd, but it happens, and it really can be a cause for concern. When you have the ability to focus on measures like this, odds are your document storage will be more streamlined and reliable as the years go on.

With this advice, we hope you can be more able to ensure your excellent document stewardship is a default, essential, reliable backbone of your business.