My company just instituted what feels like a crazy one. No email older than 90 days will be retained in outlook. Anything you need to keep longer is a "business record" and you should save .msg files in an organized folder structure on a network drive. "Outlook is not an appropriate records repository".
In Germany we have to archive every email that leads to an offer, contract or other business document for 10 years. Starting on the 1. January of the following year.
What is not allowed though, is saving everything that could be talk under colleagues or other people that is considered private…
Ohhh and we have to archive them in a way, that we can’t change them, delete them and can proof 24/7 that that’s all the emails we have.
If you dig into the rationale behind the policy, you'll likely find that it has nothing to do with email usage, and instead is much more related to controlling what is discoverable when litigation arises.
When issues would arise I would never have a trail to prove I was asked to do something out of the ordinary.