Employee Records — How Long to Keep

Have you finally concluded you must do something about the file cabinets in your office that are bulging at the seams? Would you love to purge some of your records but find yourself wondering how long you are legally obligated to keep them? Would it be easy to start with your employee-related records? After all, employees come and go, but doesn’t it seem that the amount of paperwork generated in the process just continues to grow?

Here are some guidelines to help you decipher what employee-related records you must keep and which ones you can purge. This first thing for you to know is that these types of records are governed by different laws, so this is not an instance where we can just point to 1 law in 1 book for the answer. Just to give you an idea, here are the laws that govern employee-related record-keeping requirements:

• Fair Labor Standards Act
• Civil Rights Act
• Pregnancy Discrimination Act
• Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)
• Federal Insurance Contribution Act
• Age Discrimination in Employment Act
• Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA)
• Americans with Disabilities Act
• Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA)
• Equal Pay Act
• Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act
• state & federal income tax laws
• state & federal unemployment compensation laws
• worker’s compensation laws

The second thing for you to know is that these laws are not necessarily consistent.  In fact, they often contradict one another!  As such, our recommendation is that the law with the longest retention length be followed to ensure compliance with all applicable regulations.

Third, a business seeking a single a “one size fits all” approach, should plan to keep all employee-related records for 7 years from the date of termination.  The exception is OSHA records, which must be kept for 30 years.

Finally, here are some specific retention regulations, if you choose to keep your records for only the minimum length required:

1 Year:

• Job advertisements
• Employment applications, resumes, references
• Aptitude, personality, physical testing
• I-9 immigration forms (1 year from termination or 3 years from date of hire, whichever is longer)
• Layoffs, reductions in force, recalls
• Promotion, demotion, transfer

2 Years:

• Job descriptions
• Records explaining merit or seniority systems
• Job Evaluations

3 Years:

• FMLA records
• EEO-1 forms
• Rate of pay
• Time cards
• I-9 immigration forms (1 year from termination or 3 years from date of hire, whichever is longer)
• Collective bargaining agreements

4 Years:

• Employee information (name, address, phone number, position, date of hire, date of termination, SSN)
• Payroll documents (employee’s sex and job title, time of day and day of week the workday and workweek begin,
  regular rate of pay, hours worked each day and each workweek, straight time and overtime earnings, additions to and deductions from pay, total wages, date of payment and pay period covered, wage rate tables, work-time schedules, order, shipping and billing records, descriptions and/or explanations of any wage differentials for employees of the opposite sex)

5 Years:

• Unemployment records
• OSHA Forms 300, 300A, 301
• Apprenticeship/training programs

6 Years:

• Insurance summary plan documents
• Pension benefits

Get going on your document management solution by calling ScanWorks today. ScanWorks aims to make professional document scanning cost-effective for every type and size business.   Please call ScanWorks at 330-322-2988 for further information or for a free sample scan of your records.  Or click here for a Quik Quote.