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employees are required to contact their records liaison

Employees are typically required to contact their records liaison when there are questions or actions involving how official records are stored, used, retained, or destroyed under an organization’s records management policy.

What a records liaison is

  • A records liaison (sometimes called a records liaison officer or records coordinator) is the designated point of contact in a department who works with the central records/archives office.
  • This person helps staff apply records policies correctly, including retention schedules, storage standards, and proper destruction or transfer of records.

When employees must contact their liaison

Employees are usually required to contact their records liaison when they:

  • Need guidance on whether a document is an official record or how long it must be kept.
  • Plan to delete, destroy, or transfer records and need to confirm the approved retention schedule and process.
  • Are leaving the organization or changing roles and must ensure records are inventoried and properly handed over.
  • Encounter special situations like litigation holds, audits, or public records/FOIA requests that affect how records are handled.

What the liaison actually does

  • Reviews or helps create inventories and schedules for the records in a unit or department.
  • Coordinates with the central records officer/archives to implement records policies and resolve tricky records questions.
  • Disseminates updated procedures and trains or reminds employees about correct records management practices.

Why this requirement matters

  • Proper contact with the records liaison reduces legal, regulatory, and privacy risks tied to mishandling records.
  • It helps maintain consistent, documented practices across departments so that records can be found, defended, or lawfully destroyed when needed.

In many organizations, “employees are required to contact their records liaison” simply means: do not make independent decisions about keeping or destroying official records—run them through the designated records expert first.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.