For awhile now I've read debate on employee files being maintained by managers other than what is already the "official" records kept in the HR office and how it could possibly be an issue from a legal standpoint.  I know for a fact that one of our department's office assistants is maintaing at least some sort of file on that department's employees in terms of pay adjuments/transfers.  This is an old habit mainly because our personnel action forms are in triplicate and no one has really thought of anything better.  I have reason to believe that if she is keeping copies of approved pay adjustments, she is keeping copies of evaluations and anything else that might be routed through her by "her" employees before getting to me.  What are your thoughts on this and how do you go about stopping the creation of these extra files?

gi_janearng:

For awhile now I've read debate on employee files being maintained by managers other than what is already the "official" records kept in the HR office and how it could possibly be an issue from a legal standpoint.  I know for a fact that one of our department's office assistants is maintaing at least some sort of file on that department's employees in terms of pay adjuments/transfers.  This is an old habit mainly because our personnel action forms are in triplicate and no one has really thought of anything better.  I have reason to believe that if she is keeping copies of approved pay adjustments, she is keeping copies of evaluations and anything else that might be routed through her by "her" employees before getting to me.  What are your thoughts on this and how do you go about stopping the creation of these extra files?

Does your company permit evaluations and comp adjustments to be made without HR review?

Generally, I don't like the idea of that sort of evaluative information to be outside of the employee's "official" EE file.  I never had that going on in the SMB space and the large companies I'm familliar with have all the docs go through HR and they would not be retained locally unless someone copied them.  Policy/procedure/training should handle that.

gi_janearng:

For awhile now I've read debate on employee files being maintained by managers other than what is already the "official" records kept in the HR office and how it could possibly be an issue from a legal standpoint.  I know for a fact that one of our department's office assistants is maintaing at least some sort of file on that department's employees in terms of pay adjuments/transfers.  This is an old habit mainly because our personnel action forms are in triplicate and no one has really thought of anything better.  I have reason to believe that if she is keeping copies of approved pay adjustments, she is keeping copies of evaluations and anything else that might be routed through her by "her" employees before getting to me.  What are your thoughts on this and how do you go about stopping the creation of these extra files?

Does your company permit evaluations and comp adjustments to be made without HR review?

Generally, I don't like the idea of that sort of evaluative information to be outside of the employee's "official" EE file.  I never had that going on in the SMB space and the large companies I'm familliar with have all the docs go through HR and they would not be retained locally unless someone copied them.  Policy/procedure/training should handle that.

We experienced the same issues with our regional offices. Not only an old habit but also part of the "us-vs-them" mentality between our central office and regional locations. While personnel forms go through HR they are generated by the supervisors in the specific locations as well as final copies of the actions are usually routed to employees for thier own records (via the lead assistant). Although our policy on Employee Records is pretty explicit in regards to what, who, how, and where employee information is kept I started seeing unofficial "copies" popping up. No one really wanted to fess up to keeping these records so I started doing audits of each location. These audits were disguised as one on one training sessions with the lead assistants to go over ways of protecting personnel information for employees i.e. social security numbers, what you can and can't give out over the phone, performance information which usually let to a "do you have any files we could go through as examples?" type of discussion. I know this sounds a little devious but once they understood they would actually be protecting their coworkers and would not be in trouble they showed a whole lot more support then when I asked/begged/demanded they stop. I did find I had to follow up as old habits do die hard.

This issue was treated separate from the issue of direct supervisors maintaining personnel files on their active employees.