What to Put and Not Put in an Employee’s File
If you have employees, you should have an employee file on each one of your employees. The file is documentation of problems, employee accomplishments and progress, as well as a singular place that you store information about an employee.
The Typical Employee File
In a typical employee’s personal file, you should, of course, keep basic information on the employee. Some of these are obvious, like the employee’s resume, employment contract or other documents the employee signed on hiring, IRS forms, and employee evaluations.
It can also include things that you may not have readily thought of, such as emergency contacts, internal emails regarding the employee, our complaints about the employee, whether from people internally in your company, or from outside customers or clients.
Attendance records, pay records, and records of the employee completing training or professional milestones should also be included.
Review the File
Although time consuming, it can be valuable to periodically evaluate and review an employee’s file.
For example, employees who were once on a probationary period, but now are not, should have their employee file reflected accordingly. An employee who took an extended medical leave, should have their file reflected to say that. Employees who were promoted should have their new, current position and salary reflected. Often, these things happen, but an employee file doesn’t reflect any of them.
What Not to Include
It does happen that employers keep things in employee files that shouldn’t be there.
To the extent you get them, are given them, or have access to them, never put an employee’s medical information in an employee file. They must be kept separately, in a file or location that is accessible to only the most vital people in the company.
Immigration paperwork, such as I-9s, should be separate because the government has the right to access and review these files, and if they are in with everything else that is in an employee’s file, you may be giving access to employees’ personal information to these government actors. Keeping immigration paperwork in a separate file ensures that the government inspects only those papers, without seeing everything else in the employee’s file.
It should go without saying that nothing in an employee’s file should ever have commentary on the employee’s race or nationality or disability or gender. Often, people send emails and have commentary that inadvertently ends up in an employee’s file. If, for example, an evaluator’s commentary on an employee’s job performance is in the file, you want to make sure that the evaluator did not say anything that could lead to a harassment or discrimination lawsuit.
Remember that in many cases, the employee’s file becomes evidence in a court case. Imagine that a judge or jury will one day see and read the file. That means you want the file to be complete, comprehensive, and most important, objective in its commentary, compliments and criticism.
Call the West Palm Beach business litigation attorneys at Pike & Lustig to help you with your employment law problems today.
