Original Date: August 20, 2018
I recently led a webinar on personnel files, “what should and should not be included in personnel files.” As I designed the training, I carved out a section of the material to record retention periods. This is an area, that I have audited for organizations and found issues. How long do we need to keep forms and what are the laws associated to the retention periods? For most of us in the HR profession and/or small business owners, we generally keep more information than we might need too. However, it is not recommended to discard or shred any information that there is no retention period on. Seek guidance if there is a question, prior to discarding documents. The laws below are federal laws, in many instances, state laws (bonus NY information) have longer retention periods for personnel related documents. Understand both requirements.
Below are the 15 record retention requirements (more information in links below):
Additional Information on Records, Retention Period and Laws
Retention of Terminated Employee’s Records Article (Great Information)
Bonus New York State Recordkeeping Requirements:
– Matthew Burr, HR Consultant
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Published by Mathew W. Burr, MJ-LEL, MBA, MHRIR, GPHR, SHRM-SCP, SPHR, CPHR
Matthew Burr has over eleven years of experience working in the human resources field, starting his career as an Industrial Relations Intern at Kennedy Valve Manufacturing to most recently founding and managing a human resource consulting company; Burr Consulting, LLC. Prior to founding the consulting firm, the majority of his career was spent in manufacturing and healthcare. He specializes in labor and employment law, conflict resolution, performance management, labor and employment relations. Matthew has a generalist background in HR and provides strategic HR services to his clients, focusing on small and medium sized organizations. He is a retired Assistant Professor of Business Management from Elmira College, an Adjunct Professor at Alfred State University and Collin College. Matthew is also the SHRM Certification Exam Instructor at the college, his students currently have an 80% pass rate on the SHRM-SCP and 92.3% pass rate on the SHRM-CP. Matthew works as a trainer Tompkins Cortland Community College, Corning Community College, Broome Community College and Penn State University. He also acts as an On-Call Mediator and Fact-Finder through the Public Employment Relations Board in New York State, working with public sector employers and labor unions.
Matthew has publications at the Cornell HR Review, Business Insider, New York State Bar Association, Expert 360 (in Australia). In early 2017, he published his first book, “$74,000 in 24 Months: How I killed my student loans (and you can too!).”
Matthew has an associate's degree in business administration from Tompkins Cortland Community College, a Bachelor of Science degree in business management from Elmira College, a master's degree from the University of Illinois School of Labor and Employment Relations in Human Resources & Industrial Relations and a Master’s in Business Administration specializing in entrepreneurship from Syracuse University. He currently holds a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR), Global Professional in Human Resources (GPHR) and the Society of Human Resource Management Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP) certifications.
Matthew has been featured on CNN Money, Fast Company, Fits Small Business, Magnify Money, My Twin Tiers, Namely, Student Loan Hero, Smart Sheet and CEO Blog Nation.
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