Record Retention and Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

jbierman

Now that the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act has passed, how long are all of you going to keep your pay records?  And is this separate from your HR Records...meaning, right now, we purge all payroll records after 3 years but we hang on to our payroll records for 7 years.....should we save all records for 7 years?  Will this be long enough?

 Thanks for your help.

regdunlop

the keys to recordkeeping are making sure it is in compliance with the law and are consistent. so make sure your practices are both (it's hard to tell from your question whether they are). i don't think the law changes how long we have to keep records but that doesn't mean you shouldn't audit your recordkeeping practices.  the new law does establish a new time frame for employees to file lawsuits.  if your pay practices are discirminatory  the 180 day deadline to file a complaint will restart every time you pay those employees.  therefore it is important to make sure your pay practices aren't discirminating against anyone based on age, gender, race, color, national origin, disability. this will also require an audit.  talk to your counsel before starting one.

IT HR

What I have heard from some attorneys is that until there are some cases that go through on this that you should keep your payroll records indefinitely, especially if you have currently or recently had some law suits related to this issue. 

TXHRGuy

[quote user="IT HR"]What I have heard from some attorneys is that until there are some cases that go through on this that you should keep your payroll records indefinitely, especially if you have currently or recently had some law suits related to this issue. [/quote]

If you've had any notice of legal action or impending legal action, you can get hit with spoliation of evidence even if you are just following your normal record destruction policies.

kyliefan

Hi-There's a white paper on the home page of HR.BLR.com on this topic. It includes an interview with an employment law attorney. Looks pretty good and should be helpful to you. It's called "Fair Pay Act Impacts Compensation Recordkeeping."

You can link to it directly at http://hr.blr.com/whitepapers.aspx?id=79542.

CarsonD

Hello and thanks for any advice in advance.  Can anyone offer any opinions from legal or other opinions from records management experts who can say specifically how long payroll files should be kept?  It seems to me that they should be kept permanently now.  

Our policy is to hold onto them for 6 years, but now there is no telling how long we may need them.  There are many scenarios that make it confusing.  We have records on hand for a specific employee who left the company 6 years ago, but what about another who left 8 years ago?  And we still may need other payroll records to show that pay scales were indeed equal.  Fortunately our office is small and there are only 30 employees.  Everything is electronic and it is no problem to store these records.  

IT HR

SHRM is hosting a webinar tomorrow (Tuesday, April 28th) that is supposed to address the record retention issue.