Employment overview record

Our employment overview record can be placed at the front of an employee’s personnel file to enable you to have easy access to key information about their employment history. 

Personnel records

You probably keep a personnel file for each member of staff which contains a large amount of employment-related information, and that file will continue to increase in size the longer an employee has been employed. It will normally start with their CV, job offer letter, references and right to work check and then progress to include matters such as: their contract of employment, letters reflecting contractual changes, such as salary increases and promotions, appraisal forms, holiday forms, sickness absence forms, details of other absences, flexible working requests, any disciplinary action taken and any training undertaken. So, over time, this will start to mount up to a lot of paperwork and it means it can be difficult to find certain information quickly.

Regular reviews

It's important for data protection purposes that you don't just stick documentation on an employee's personnel file and forget about it. One of the data protection principles in the UK GDPR states that the personal data you hold must be adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they are processed and another of the principles states that personal data must not be kept (in a form which permits identification of the employee) for longer than is necessary. You should therefore review personnel files periodically, e.g. annually, to ensure there's a sound business reason requiring the information to continue to be held. In particular, the personnel files of long-serving employees may contain a backlog of out of date or irrelevant information that really ought to be removed and permanently and securely destroyed. For example, documents relating to expired disciplinary warnings and old sickness absence forms.

Employment overview record

Our Employment Overview Record enables you to collate key details about an employee and their employment history. You can then keep this document at the top of their personnel file as a useful source of easy reference. The contents include:

• the main details relating to the employee, e.g. their address, contact numbers, NI number, date of birth, job title, current salary and emergency contact details
• details of annual leave and other absences (sickness absence, maternity leave, etc.)
• timekeeping, disciplinary and training records
• accidents at work.

You only need to list brief details on these pages effectively as an aide memoire - you can then refer to the full documentation held elsewhere in the personnel file if needs be. You can also add new sections to the record if you wish. In addition, even though the UK GDPR states that you shouldn't keep personal information for longer than is necessary, there's nothing to stop you retaining a brief factual summary of, say, disciplinary action taken or the employee's overall sickness absence record as that's all part of their employment history.