23 Sep 2025

IM Blog: The Human Factor: Why Information Management is Really About Psychology

Why your biggest recordkeeping challenge isn't technology – it's human behavior.

Picture this scenario: You've just delivered another training session on your organisation's new document management system. The participants attended online while multitasking their regular work. Half had their cameras off. A few asked basic questions that suggested they weren't really listening. Sound familiar?

If you're nodding along, you've discovered the fundamental truth that most information management professionals eventually face: our biggest challenge isn't technological – it's psychological. After decades of focusing on systems, standards, and procedures, it's time to acknowledge that successful recordkeeping is fundamentally about understanding and influencing human behavior.

The Psychology Behind Poor Recordkeeping

Let's start with an uncomfortable reality: most employees know they should create and capture records properly, but they don't. This isn't about lack of training or unclear procedures – it's about human psychology.
The cognitive disconnect is real:

Employees understand the importance of recordkeeping in abstract terms
They recognize that good records support decision-making and compliance
They acknowledge that poor recordkeeping creates problems
Yet they consistently choose convenience over compliance

Why does this happen?

The answer lies in fundamental psychological principles:

Immediate vs. Delayed Consequences: Creating a proper record takes time now, but the benefit (finding that record later) feels abstract and distant. Humans are wired to prioritize immediate needs over future benefits.
Cognitive Load: Modern work environments overwhelm employees with competing priorities. When faced with multiple urgent tasks, recordkeeping – which rarely feels urgent – gets deprioritized.
Personal Relevance: If employees don't see how good recordkeeping directly benefits them personally, they'll view it as "someone else's problem" or "bureaucratic overhead."
Learned Helplessness: When employees have experienced poorly designed systems or seen records disappear into digital black holes, they lose faith that good recordkeeping is even possible.

Why Traditional Training Fails?

Most information management training approaches fail because they focus on the "what" and "how" without addressing the "why" from a personal psychological perspective.

Traditional training typically covers:

System features and functionality
Organizational policies and procedures
Compliance requirements and risks
Technical steps for record creation and capture

What's missing is the human element:

Personal motivation and meaning-making
Individual barriers and resistance
Emotional responses to change
Social dynamics and peer influence

When employees sit through training while doing other work, it's not disrespect – it's a symptom of training that doesn't connect with their psychological needs and motivations. They're signaling that the content doesn't feel personally relevant or compelling enough to warrant their full attention.

The Power of Job Crafting

Here's where organizational psychology offers a game-changing solution: job crafting. This proven approach allows employees to redesign aspects of their work to make it more meaningful, satisfying, and aligned with their personal values and goals.

Job crafting works on three levels:

Task Crafting: Employees reshape what they do and how they do it. For recordkeeping, this might mean finding ways to integrate record creation into existing workflows or developing personal systems that make retrieval easier.
Relational Crafting: Employees change how they interact with others through their work. This could involve becoming the team's "information hero" or helping colleagues find important documents.
Cognitive Crafting: Employees change how they think about their work and its purpose. Instead of seeing recordkeeping as bureaucratic overhead, they might reframe it as "enabling evidence-based decision making" or "protecting the organization's knowledge."
The psychological impact is powerful: When employees can connect recordkeeping to their own sense of purpose and professional identity, compliance becomes intrinsically motivated rather than externally imposed.
Making Recordkeeping Personally Meaningful
The key to successful behavior change lies in helping individuals discover personal meaning in good recordkeeping practices. This requires understanding what motivates each person and connecting recordkeeping to those motivations.

Some employees are motivated by:

Efficiency: "Good recordkeeping saves me time by making information easy to find"
Professional reputation: "Being known as someone who maintains excellent records enhances my credibility"
Team support: "My good recordkeeping helps my colleagues succeed"
Problem-solving: "Complete records help me make better decisions"
Security: "Proper recordkeeping protects me from legal or compliance issues"

Effective approaches include:

Personal success stories: Share examples of how good recordkeeping helped specific individuals achieve their goals
Peer influence: Identify recordkeeping champions who can influence through social proof
Individual benefits: Focus on "what's in it for me" rather than organizational benefits
Choice and autonomy: Give employees flexibility in how they achieve recordkeeping goals
The Environmental Behavior Change Model

Consider how society successfully transformed environmental behaviors. Decades ago, dog owners routinely left waste in parks, and households threw everything into single garbage bins. Today, most people automatically clean up after their pets and sort recycling. This transformation succeeded because it:

Made the personal benefits clear (cleaner neighborhoods, environmental legacy for children)
Created social norms and peer pressure
Provided simple, convenient systems
Connected behavior to personal identity and values
Celebrated success and progress

The same principles apply to recordkeeping behavior change:

Connect good recordkeeping to personal and professional benefits
Create positive social norms around information management
Design systems that make compliance easier than non-compliance
Help employees see good recordkeeping as part of their professional identity
Recognize and celebrate improvement
Building Individual Engagement

Successful recordkeeping culture change must engage employees at the individual level, not just through top-down mandates. This requires understanding that behavior change is ultimately personal and emotional, not just rational and procedural. Effective individual engagement strategies:

Start with listening: Understand individual barriers, frustrations, and motivations before prescribing solutions.
Focus on quick wins: Identify small changes that provide immediate personal benefits to build momentum.
Provide autonomy: Give employees choices in how they achieve recordkeeping goals rather than rigid one-size-fits-all approaches.
Connect to existing values: Link good recordkeeping to values employees already hold (professionalism, teamwork, efficiency).
Make it social: Leverage peer relationships and team dynamics to support behavior change.
Celebrate progress: Recognize improvement and effort, not just perfect compliance.

Your Next Steps as an IM Professional

Understanding the psychology of recordkeeping transforms how you approach your role. Instead of being primarily a systems administrator or policy enforcer, you become a behavior change specialist and culture catalyst. Practical actions you can take:

Reframe your conversations: Instead of talking about records management requirements, discuss how good information practices help people do their jobs better.
Develop individual relationships: Understand what motivates different team members and tailor your approach accordingly.
Focus on personal benefits: Always lead with "what's in it for them" rather than organizational compliance needs.
Create positive experiences: Design interactions with recordkeeping systems to be as smooth and rewarding as possible.
Build social proof: Identify and celebrate employees who demonstrate good recordkeeping practices.

The uncomfortable truth is that traditional approaches to information management – focusing on systems, policies, and training – have reached their limits. The organisations that will succeed in creating sustainable recordkeeping cultures are those that embrace the psychological dimension of behavior change. This doesn't mean abandoning good systems or clear policies. It means recognizing that those systems and policies will only succeed when they're supported by individual employees who are personally motivated to use them well.

The future of information management isn't just about better technology or clearer procedures – it's about better understanding of human psychology and more effective approaches to behavior change. When we master this human factor, we transform from order-takers to strategic partners in organizational success.

Your role as an information management professional has never been more important – or more fundamentally about understanding and influencing human behavior. The question is: are you ready to embrace this psychological dimension of your work?

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