Every organization we work with faces some level of digital document hoarding. Employees store vast numbers of emails, files, and older documents, often without considering whether those materials still hold value. While some content must be retained for legal or business reasons, much of it is either redundant, outdated, or trivial (ROT).
This accumulation clogs file shares, desktops, and cloud platforms, driving up storage costs and creating eDiscovery and privacy challenges. Attempts to rein in often fall short, not because of a lack of policy, but because the underlying employee behaviors go unaddressed.
Why People Hoard Digital Files
Hoarding isn’t a malicious act. In today’s tech-driven workplace, saving data is nearly effortless. Whether it’s a quick email backup to a personal folder or keeping old project files “just in case,” employees often don’t stop to think about the consequences. Moving to the cloud doesn’t solve the issue; it can actually make it easier to accumulate digital clutter.
Trying to fix the problem with threats or policy reminders rarely works. What’s needed is a thoughtful approach to change management, one that tackles habits and attitudes alongside technical controls.
Establish a Practical Retention Schedule
A solid retention schedule gives employees and systems a framework for what to keep and for how long. But for it to be effective, it has to reflect actual business processes. That means understanding how employees use information. Interviews are usually more revealing than surveys here. They help uncover frustrations like “I can never find what I need” or “We get too many emails to sort through.” These insights help shape retention policies that are both realistic and relevant.
Make It Easy to Do the Right Thing
Compliance shouldn’t be hard. If filing a document takes too long or tagging it is confusing, people will find workarounds. That’s why we recommend what we call the “five-second rule”: employees should be able to store and classify a document in five seconds or less.
Implementing intuitive systems like SharePoint or other document management tools helps. Features like drag-and-drop filing or pre-set metadata reduce friction and improve adoption. The less effort required, the more likely employees will comply.
Focus on Centralization, Not Just Deletion
Rather than start with mass deletion, we recommend beginning with gaining control. This means getting data into managed, central locations where retention policies can be enforced and holds applied when needed. Deactivating personal storage like PST files and shifting email archives into managed systems is a good first step.
Once data is centralized, you can implement automated disposition that removes content once it reaches its retention limit. This reduces manual effort and ensures consistency.
Let Automation Handle the Heavy Lifting
Most employees feel that it is too hard to delete what they do not need any longer. Contoural agrees and believes that organizations should flip the request. Instead of focusing on what to delete, employees should focus on what to keep, as this is a much smaller percentage of information to manage. Then, the system can manage the ROT (redundant, obsolete, and trivial) information.
Automated disposition plays a critical role in sustainable governance. When documents reach their end-of-life, systems should remove or archive them according to policy. This helps shrink storage costs and limits the exposure of outdated or sensitive information. By establishing record repositories that are configured with retention periods and automated deletion, records will be destroyed as soon as they expire.
However, the big impact comes from applying automated deletion to non-records. These are the duplicate copies, drafts, non-work-related materials, remnants of initiatives that started and then got cancelled, etc. If these are stored in an enterprise content management platform such as M365, then these repositories can also be configured for automated deletion.
Since these are non-records, they are not represented on the Records Retention Schedule. How long then, should they be retained? Many companies are adopting a policy of 3 years since last update. The tracking spreadsheet that a manager updates monthly with operational statistics will never be deleted because it is being updated so frequently. This makes sense. While not a record of the organization, it is a useful tool and the manager would not want it deleted. On the other hand, the copy of the all-hands presentation from several years ago, which was saved on a OneDrive for short-term reference and then forgotten, would be deleted. This would happen without the employee needing to take any action.
Instead of focusing on what to delete, employees should focus on what to keep, as this is a much smaller percentage of information to manage.
Email is another source of ROT. An emerging best practice is the 3-email-category approach. First, records should be moved out of email to a repository where other team members can access them. Second, obvious non-records of no value (e.g., vendor solicitations, out of office replies) should be left in the Inbox with a short retention period (e.g., 3-6 months). Third, emails that do not represent records but do have some value as short-term reference should be moved to any email folder and they will be retained for a few years (3 years is typical).
Driving Cultural Change with Clear Communication
Behavior change is the hardest part of any governance initiative. Employees often hoard for reasons they believe are valid. Maybe someone once told them never to delete anything. Or maybe inconsistent messages from Legal and IT create confusion. Understanding these drivers helps in crafting messaging that resonates.
Communicating the benefits of the new approach is crucial. For example, employees who dislike mailbox quotas may welcome time-based retention that eliminates size limits. Show how policies make their work easier, better search, fewer silos, and less clutter. Use multiple channels: town halls, posters, quick guides, and targeted emails. Repeat the message often.
Measure Progress and Adjust
Tracking change is just as important as initiating it. Start with a baseline: how many PSTs exist, how much storage is used, how data is distributed. Then measure improvements over time. Look for reduced volume, increased use of official repositories, and better adherence to retention policies. Look for evidence of “shell games”. Maybe employees have done a great job of eliminating the ROT from fileshares, but it does not do much good if their OneDrive storage has tripled overnight, indicating that they simply moved the information.
Also evaluate behavior: are employees classifying documents correctly? Are they following policy? These metrics help refine training and identify where further support is needed.
In Conclusion
Stopping digital hoarding isn’t about punishing employees, but rather about creating an environment where it’s easy to do the right thing. Through better retention schedules, automated tools, and behavior-focused change management, organizations can dramatically reduce data clutter and risk.
One client recently eliminated more than 40 million unnecessary emails, and another cut its unstructured data by half. The key is a blend of policy, technology, and culture. With the right mix, organizations not only gain control over their data but also make life easier for their employees, a win all around.