File Clerks

Job purpose

To classify, index and file the organisation's correspondence, invoices, receipts and other records, to retrieve them and supply copies to authorised users, and to keep the filing system and its retention arrangements in order, so that records can be found when needed and disposed of correctly when they are not.

Skills

• Knowledge of filing and records-management practice — classification by content, purpose, user criteria and chronological, alphabetical or numerical order, indexing codes, and the retention and destruction rules governing how long material must be kept — with confident use of records databases, scanners, microfilm readers and general office machines. A two-year degree is the most common qualification, with secondary-level education close behind, plus up to a year of on-the-job training.
• Answers questions about records and files from colleagues across the organisation and from external customers and the public, by telephone, e-mail and in person, at a high volume of contact. Establishes what a requester needs, explains what the files contain and what may be released.
• Reads or scans incoming material to determine how and where it should be classified, and decides when a record is outdated and whether to destroy it or move it to inactive storage under the file maintenance guidelines. Traces misfiled material. Problems are procedural, with precedent available, though there is scope to improve an existing filing system or implement a new one.
• Organises a continuing flow of material to be filed and requests to be met, working to retrieval deadlines under time pressure, and inspects files periodically to confirm correct placement, legibility and condition. Sets much of the day's order of work within guidelines set by others.
• Seated screen work with repetitive motion, combined with the handling of paper documents — sorting, stamping identification codes, copying, and placing material into cabinets, boxes, bins and drawers — and operation of mechanised files that rotate records into position.

Responsibilities

• No supervisory responsibility. Provides a records service to every department, gathers material to be filed from departments and employees, and may coordinate colleagues on filing work without authority over them.
• Handles routine financial paperwork where required: processing accounts payable, reviewing invoices, collecting cash payments and issuing receipts. Holds no budget and commits no expenditure.
• Ordinary care of a workstation, filing cabinets and storage receptacles, copiers, scanners, microfilm viewers and mechanised filing equipment, and of the records held in them.
• Custodian of the organisation's filed records. Adds new material and creates records, assigns identification numbers, keeps logbooks and computerised records of what has been filed or removed, tracks borrowed files until returned, and releases copies only to authorised users. Some material is confidential and must be secured. Accuracy in indexing determines whether a record can be found at all, though its content is set by others.

Effort required

• Steady, exact attention across a repeating cycle of sorting, coding, filing and retrieval, with the classification judgement on each item made quickly and correctly. Requests arrive at volume and to a deadline, so decisions are frequent but small.
• Work is repetitive and largely reactive, and involves handling confidential material that must not be disclosed to the wrong person. Requires patience and discretion rather than emotional resilience.
• Predominantly seated at a workstation, with repetitive motion in handling and keying. No lifting or exertion evidenced.

Working conditions

• An ordinary indoor, environmentally controlled office and its record store, with no physical hazards and no exposure beyond the normal office setting. Psychosocial demand is limited, arising mainly from the confidentiality of the material.
• Almost all incumbents work a regular established schedule, typically forty hours, with a substantial minority working longer. Time pressure comes from retrieval requests, and the same operations repeat many times a day; there is latitude over the order of work, exercised inside file maintenance guidelines and retention rules set elsewhere.