Paving a career path to increase RM staff and ensure program success.

• Author: Goodall, Jannette
• Position: RIM FUNDAMENTALS - Records management

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This case study describes how the City of Austin, Texas, developed a records management (RM) career path, along with RM training and a certificate program, that allowed it to double its dedicated RM staff in three years to meet the RM needs of more than 40 departments physically dispersed through the city.

Many organizations lack adequate dedicated records management (RM) staff to ensure efficient operations. And, in some, departments need to identify who is accountable for managing records. These challenges obligate RM professionals to become mentors, providing staff with support, training, and coaching to ensure that the RM network is functional.

The City of Austin, Texas, strengthened its RM program by incorporating RM training into its career development plan, using a process that may be beneficial to other organizations seeking to improve or initiate an enterprise-wide RM network.

Setting the Stage

In Austin, the Records Management Services Division (RMS) within the Office of the City Clerk is responsible for managing records citywide. But, because the city's 40-plus departments are composed of more than 12,000 employees operating in multiple locations throughout Travis County, it would be next to impossible for the corporate office alone to manage all of the records these departments generate.

Therefore, the success of the city's corporate RM plan is dependent on a network of individual staff members within each department who are assigned to serve as liaisons to the RMS and to other departments within the city.

Establishing a Career Path

The city's effort to create a career development plan began in 2009 when the Aviation and the Parks and Recreation departments became interested in hiring a full-time records analyst to implement the city's RM program.

In response, the City of Austin's Human Resources Department (HR) made two suggestions:

1. Create a "job family" to provide a career path with distinct differences between the corporate RM staff and the department RM staff

2. Create a certificate program based on knowledge and training that could assist staff in qualifying for the department RM positions

To initiate the process, HR and RMS conducted a job analysis to determine the job specifications for the current RMS records analyst position and any resulting new positions. During this process, the job tasks and minimum qualifications were established.

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As a result of this analysis, two...