Personnel(ly) Speaking
Personnel Management
Systems, Inc.
Get Ready for Spring Cleaning
How long do we need
to keep all this stuff?
Every year at this time, our phones ring with questions such as “How long do I have to keep these personnel files? Or “Do we really need to hang on to these time cards?” This year questions are also arising about the rumored and confusing new record retention requirements related to electronic documents.
How about some
guidelines?
Below is a short list to guide you in your spring office clean-up. Remember that many federal and state laws include provisions related to record retention. While the following does not anticipate every piece of paper, these general, and usually generous, guidelines anticipate the most common record retention questions.
Employee Compensation: Your payroll department should keep payroll records (including records of wages, hours, collective bargaining agreements, employment contracts, date of payment, amount of payment, record of straight and overtime earnings etc.) for three years. The actual time cards can be discarded after two years.
Leave of Absence Records: FMLA wants you to retain records related to leaves of absence for three years. This includes basic payroll data, FMLA leave dates, and copies of leave notices.
I-9 Documentation: Employers
must retain completed I-9s for three years after the date of hire or one year
after the date employment ends, whichever is later.
Pre-Employment Records (i.e. advertisements, applications, resumes): The Age Discrimination in Employment Act requires you to keep advertisements, job applications, and resumes for one year from the date of the event.
OSHA Logs: This law mandates that logs be kept for five years following the end of the year to which the records relate.
Employment Records (including promotions, demotions, transfers,
terminations):
Companies must keep these records for one year from the date the record was made or the termination action was taken, whichever is later.
EEO-1 and Affirmative Action Plans: These retention requirements are not specified by law. However, EEO-1’s and AAP’s must be updated annually, and the most recent version must be available for review.
Documents Related to Enforcement Actions: If your company is being investigated for some reason, you should retain everything until the action is completely finalized. For example, if you are audited by wage and hour, you must not discard wage information related to the time period being audited. If you are responding to an EEOC complaint, you must retain all the documentation related to that complaint and employee.
What about electronic
documents?
The
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) were recently revised to address issues
of discovery as they relate to electronically stored information. (Basically, the FRCP are the court rules
and procedures attorneys follow when conducting civil suits.) The FRCP always included rules related to the
retention and discovery of documents relevant to litigation. However, because so many documents are now
stored electronically, the rules needed to be updated.
While
you receive alerts and newsletters putting these changes in the context of
employment related lawsuits, the change actually affects all types of civil lawsuits, not just employment lawsuits. We are not experts in data storage or the
FRCP so we recommend you contact legal counsel for guidance on this issue. However several steps seem prudent:
·
Talk
with your IT department to determine what your company policy or practice is
related to data storage and retention.
·
If
not done already, draft a Document Storage and Retention policy. This policy will set out procedures for
scheduled destruction of documents and electronically stored information. Have your attorney review your policy.
·
Draft
a policy to address document preservation should litigation be threatened. The rules change if you think you will be
sued.
·
Communicate
your policies to all employees who may create or have access to electronic
data.
If you are like most businesses,
you create and save an enormous amount of data – both electronically and
hardcopy. This is a good opportunity to
review and update your policies related to retention; it is a good preventative
measure to save time and expense should your company ever, unfortunately, be
named in a lawsuit.
How do we get rid of
it?
Please be careful when disposing of documents. Imagine the outcry if you simply put in the dumpster documents listing employees’ social security numbers, addresses, or private medical information. Many states have laws requiring organizations to carefully maintain security and confidentiality when disposing of files, generally, requiring that you render the information unreadable or undecipherable.
Office shredders are appropriate for daily use, but you can also ask document destruction companies to bring a truck to your business for either regularly scheduled shredding or one-time destruction of large quantities of paper. These services are cost effective and very efficient. (Well, at least the one we use is.)
Whether you are still working on your end of the year file purges or are anticipating office spring cleaning, we hope you will refer to these guidelines. If you need further assistance on this or any other Human Resource issue, call on Personnel Management Systems.
Personnel(ly) Speaking is a monthly comment on HR
issues of importance. It is intended to
provide general information and must not be construed as legal advice. Reproductions are allowed as long as credit
for this information is given to PMSI.
We welcome your comments, questions, and concerns. © PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS, INC.,
Corporate Office (425) 576-1900, Colorado Office (720) 497-0200, www.hrpmsi.com.