Hey everyone, Barbara Hemphill here again! I am thrilled to share the backstory of one of my favorite speeches, “Pay Me Now – or Pay Me Later…” Let’s delve into the economics of clutter and why information management matters for effective leaders.
The inspiration for this speech comes from the stark reality revealed by research – for every five employees an organization hires, only four are doing what they are paid to do. The fifth one? They’re spending their time searching for information needed to perform their tasks. That’s a productivity cost that influential leaders can’t afford to ignore.
Carol Watson, VP and General Counsel of Assurity Life Insurance highlights the outdated “keeping everything” strategy in many corporate record retention policies. With the dynamics of records management evolving since the era of central filing systems, it’s essential to adapt to new software and retention policies. Adding AI adds a new dimension of complexity and an opportunity to create more powerful ways of retrieving information. The challenge is real, with increased hybrid offices and information scattered across individual offices, file cabinets, and storage rooms, often poorly managed.
Why does records management matter? Your task accomplishment is tied to finding information when needed. Failure to do so leads to wasted time, missed opportunities, and increased stress, affecting individuals and organizations. Blame for records mismanagement is widespread, and to tackle this, I stress the need to answer seven crucial questions requiring organization-wide cooperation.
To address this, I emphasize the importance of teaching employees how to make decisions about the information they create and providing the necessary tools for implementation. I also share the wisdom that there’s no “right way” to organize; it’s an art. At Productive Environment Institute, we’ve developed a 5-step process called The Productive Environment Process™ applicable to any organization.
In Mark Diamond’s recent presentation, the CEO of Contoural, the most prominent digital management company in the US, shared a staggering statistic. On average, employees spend 406 hours weekly searching for information, losing 2-3 hours per employee. When someone leaves, valuable knowledge is lost, and with more people working from home, if the information isn’t managed well, collaboration becomes challenging. In a 500-person company, this amounts to a whopping 78,000 hours lost every year, a challenge that, if unaddressed, seriously impacts a company’s efficiency.
Ready to take charge of your information management journey? It starts with you! Fill out my speaker request form, and let’s collaborate to create a productive environment for success.
