Personnel file

SSD · August 2005

I have an employee that asked if she can review her personnel file. Of course I allowed her to in my office and she was very surprised to see some emails and memos from former managers tied to her "negative" perfomance that were not addressed to her. She became very emotional and distraught. The two managers responsible for the documentation were terminated for some questionable ethics unrelated to this employee. Since the two managers have left the company, the employee in question has been promoted and has excellent performance reviews from new managers. She recently asked me if there's any offcial way that the older documentation can be omitted from her file.

I've always been under the impression that it's not possible to "take out" any documentation, good or bad from a personnel file. Please advise.

FYI - I'm the HR Mgr so I was not with the company when the former managers were employed.

LivindonSouth · August 2005

I would certainly consider removing those things especially since she did not sign them, receive a copy or have knowledge of them. In the long run, those memos would not stand the 'daylight test' if the company attempted to base a negative employment decision on them anyway. I don't see that they have any real value.

There is no regulation, law, rule or standard for what you are allowed to remove from a file except those things required by federal or state regulation to be maintained.

WT · August 2005

A basic rule of thumb is that contents of a personnel file should be known to the person. Thus, notes, evaluations, coaching or discipline should be something a person already seen. Otherwise, if you are looking to modify the behavior of the employee, these things would have no value.

Crout · August 2005

You could remove them, or allow her to compose rebuttals and attach them to the documents. But as Don said, their value is dubious anyway.

Dutch2 · August 2005

If you dicide to remove them, have the ee come to your office and allow her to run them through the shredder herself.
Another option, I keep a seperate file (not a secret file) where supervisor's notes etc. are kept referring to coaching sessions and the like. When the superivsor feels that the situation is not likely to improve this is their record of their conversation with the ee. They normally have the date, time, and brief summary of the discussion they had with the ee and is signed by the Supervisor. These papers do not go into the ee's personnel file, but most feel it is safer for these to be under lock and key in HR than left with the Supervisors.
Good luck...

Rockie · August 2005

I don't put anything like this in the personnel file unless it is a formal, written disciplinary action that the supervisor and the employee has signed stating that he or she has seen this (whether they agree with it or not).

Any employee notes on individuals, I keep in a separate file in my office in case they have to be referred to in the future for any reason.

I'd take these notations and emails out of the file. It's a good idea to let her shred them.

HRinFL · August 2005

I don't like to remove items because if you admit to that, it makes people wander what else you removed. Regardless of whether you remove them, if there are ever any issues with this ee and you land in court, she will bring it up. So, I would wander, if they had that in the file, and it is not in there now, even though the ee admits these were negative and the company took them out at her request, could they have taken out things that showed her in a positive light to downplay the type of ee she really is?

I would let her write a response (signed and dated) to the emails and attach them to the file, with a note from you about what prompted the rebutal from the ee, signed and dated. While I agree that there is nothing to keep you from getting rid of them, I just don't ever want to explain what happened to documents from someone's file to a jury.

"Whenever I start to feel blue, I start breathing again!"

Half HR · August 2005

You could also just write a note to the file stating what was removed and why. Then let her shred them.

Gillian3 · August 2005

I agree with the "dump 'em" group.

Personnel file

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