HR advice: The importance of well-maintained staff records

Whatever the size of your business, it is important that you are in the habit of keeping a range of records, both for legal requirements and your own internal HR purposes.

By Rachel Mitson, director and owner, Rebus Recruitment.

Record keeping should begin even before you have employed a new member of staff, with their job specification becoming the first document in their employee file, followed by their contract, training needs, induction information, salary details and future appraisals or disciplinary hearings.

The information contained in each employee’s records is also important to ensure your company meets current government legislation; records such as hours worked by employees is needed for the Working Times Regulations and pay rates for the Minimum Wage Act 1998.

Recording all of the information you need about your employees in properly maintained files not only makes it easier for you to access when you need it, it is also important to:

Make HR decisions such as promotions, disciplinary meetings or redundancies based on fact rather than guesswork
Know what staff resources are available to meet your production or service requirements and where your business may have skills gaps
Accurately assess levels of performance and productivity
Monitor absence levels, employee turnover, sickness, accidents, lateness and disciplinary meetings and take the appropriate form of action
Ensure that staff receive the correct pay, holidays, pension and other entitlements and benefits.

In addition, records must be stored securely and confidentially and only accessed by people who need to use the data. Records containing data on individuals are subject to the Data Protection Act and so should be accurate, up-to-date and stored for no longer than is necessary.