What is the reason for HR Documentation?
During the employee life cycle, HR documentation is required to support the employment relationship and HR processes. It’s essential to keep HR documents as a historical record of your employees when required for many reasons.
What are HR Documents?
HR documents are used to communicate, and record information about an employment relationship between an employee and an employer from the start of their employment, to the end. For example, they are used to inform employees about company policies. Other examples include the written statement of employment particulars (often included in an employment contract), job descriptions and employee handbooks. Such documents can be stored electronically or as paper records.
Depending on the type of HR document, the information may include events and actions taken. For example, HR documentation relating to a disciplinary process will contain meeting notes, actions, outcomes and letters.
Essential HR Documents
So, what HR documents should you consider as essential for your team? Some HR documents are legally required, so you will need to ensure you are prepared to issue these documents as and when required.
- Written Statement of Employment Particulars
Every employee or worker must receive a written statement of particulars of employment (under the Employment Rights Act 1996) on or before the individual’s first day of work. This document will include details about an employee’s contract such as salary, start date etc.
- Essential Company Policies
As an employer, you must have a Health and Safety policy (in writing if your company has more than five employees). We also recommend you have a disciplinary, grievance and dismissal policy in writing. Such policies are often included in an Employee Handbook, which should also ideally include policies on:
- Absence
- Maternity/paternity/adoption
- Performance
- Redundancy
- Equality and diversity
- Equal opportunities
- Data Protection and security
- Bullying and harassment
If there is an employee dispute, HR documents will be essential. For cases that go to tribunal, documents will be used for factual information and as evidence.
Therefore, it’s imperative that HR documents are kept up-to-date and in accordance with the law.
It’s not just disputes that require up-to-date and accurate HR documents; there are also other reasons why you should ensure that you manage your records well such a subject access request that any employee is within their rights to request from you.
Good Practice for keeping HR Documents
While there is some HR documentation that a company must legally provide and keep, there are many other documents relating to the following areas of the employee life cycle which should be included in HR employee records as good practice:
Job descriptions, CV’s and interview notes, offer letter and any new joiner forms, letter confirming changes to employee terms and conditions, performance reviews, meetings or investigations, training records, absence records e.g.. annual leave, sickness, maternity/paternity leave, exit interviews, redundancy paperwork.
Having a HR software system can really help with managing the volume of paperwork by keeping it digital. Please get in touch if you wish to know about affordable HR software that I can help support you with.
Don’t forget to review and update documents. You should ideally review your handbook and policies annually to ensure they reflect any legislation changes.
Tips for Managers to assist Good Practice:
- Informal documents are worth keeping where relevant
These may relate to discussions between a manager and an employee. These might be notes documenting informal one to ones, performance discussions, or email correspondence. - HR documents should reflect facts, not opinions
For example, if there is an issue with an employee’s timekeeping, records should show the dates and time of lateness and meetings about timekeeping. Documents should not include opinions from the line manager about the employee or lateness. - HR documents should be created at the time of the event
Documents should be created as close to the event as possible so that information is accurate and up-to-date, and it doesn’t get forgotten. - Changes should be documented
Each employee change must be communicated and documented for clear records.
HR Document Security and Confidentiality
Security is essential for storing employee information, and no one can have escaped the knowledge of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which was reinforced in UK law by the Data Protection Act 2018. As many HR documents will contain information about the employee, this data must be confidential and protected in accordance with data protection legislation.
It would be a data protection breach to keep HR documents indefinitely, so each company must create and maintain systems for holding HR data. There are specific limits to how long some personal data can be held, however not all HR documents are confined to set limits. If there is any doubt about how long to keep an HR document for, good practice suggests six years.
Employee records amount to personal data, and as such should be stored securely in accordance with data protection legislation.
To sum up, employers must create, hold and monitor HR documents for a legally compliant and effective HR function and company.
