As most HR professionals know, document retention for employee-related records—such as personnel files, payroll information, benefits records, and background checks—is a particularly complicated process, required by law, with variations from country to country. Complicating the process further, each document in each country has its own individual retention requirements, and the financial penalties for noncompliance can be significant. A carefully designed and implemented HR record retention policy is a necessary step to support an employer’s robust compliance program.
While disposing of too many records can increase a company's legal exposure, disposing of too few records may also increase legal exposure as well as the cost of storage. Employers must identify which records should be retained, how long records should be retained and the different formats in which records may be stored. Employers must also determine how to ensure internal HR record retention policies comply with all applicable regulations and local laws.
General Recordkeeping Requirements
Keeping HR records through a robust document retention policy may be useful to employers for various reasons, including:
However, a balance must often be struck between keeping documents for a sufficiently long period of time, so as to meet an employer’s legitimate business objectives, and not keeping those documents unnecessarily, which could give rise to a breach of data protection laws or otherwise create unnecessary risk.
Retention Periods
Most countries have minimum and maximum retention periods for certain HR records. Even if there is no statutory minimum retention period for a certain category of records in a particular country, it is often recommended to retain records until the expiration of the relevant time limits for bringing legal actions or regulatory investigations (statutes of limitations).
In addition to maintaining minimum retention periods, some countries also have maximum retention periods. A record’s survival must often be limited so as to safeguard the privacy of persons whose personal data is contained in that record. In particular, records must be kept for no longer than is necessary for achieving the purposes for which the records were collected or subsequently used. After the maximum retention periods have expired, the documents should be either permanently deleted or anonymized (i.e., all references to data subjects should be redacted so that it is no longer possible to identify those persons).
Under the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Human Resources departments have an obligation to limit storing personal employee and applicant data. One way to demonstrate this is by having a clear and well documented retention policy that limits retention periods to what is legally or contractually required.
Format of Records
Multiple laws, decisions, and even everyday life practices apply when assessing the retention period of a document. While it is generally permissible to retain only electronic copies of records, and these records are admissible in civil proceedings, it is recommended that Italian employers maintain archived copies of non–natively electronic (i.e. physical) employee-related records in the event a judge or authority specifically requests it.
Under Italian Law, it is generally permissible to retain electronic copies of records, since they have probative value in civil proceedings. However, if the signature on an original document which the electronic scanned copy refers to is contested, the verification procedure of the signature cannot be carried out on the electronic scanned copy, but only on the original document: hence, the paper original is, in these cases, necessary and therefore it is advisable to keep archived copies of non-electronic signed documents.
