purge,purge,purge
Mike Maslanka
236 Posts
most personnel files are no better than a toxic waste dump...one thing we strongly believe should be done is to purge all evaluations that are older than 3 years...employee lawyers love to point to history to convince a jury that theeir client was wrongfully terminated...do you have such policies? have you thought about implmenting and decided against it? regards from texas,mike maslanka
Comments
After 30 years in HR, Production Mgt. and LR, I have mixed veiws about purging evaluations from the records. When I am asked to evaluate the termination of a long term employee, I am interested in knowing how those evaluations looked. If the subject employee has a long history of success, I'm curious to know what went wrong. Further, losing a seasoned veteran can leave a whole in the organization that should be evaluated by an HR professional that knows how to find out the whole story before any final decision is made.
It may also prove important to know ( and be able to prove ) exactly what was in the file. Some companys provide the employee with a copy of the evaluation. The lawyer that loves to point to old evaluations is speaking from a position of power when he holds the only copy of the document. And if the document has been "enhanced" in some way, you are not in a strong position to dispute the altered document...
Many years ago, my mentor told me to "Pick your battles and know when to compromise".
For my money, I'd rather have the documents on hand and know where my worst battles are likely to surface.....
>has either been corrected by the evaluee or is the fault of the
>Manager. Besides, just how thick can those HR files get.
Pretty thick, really. I have to side with "meat-n-tators" on this one. While I understand that old evaluations with high ratings can come back to haunt you, I have to ask the question "Why did we fire (demote, discipline, etc..) this person in the first place?" If a negative action has been taken without a review of the documented past history something is wrong in HRLand, nor to mention the Legal suite.