Personnel file

What it means

A personnel file holds the documents about an employee: the contract and amendments, pay notices, the job description, training, leave plans and termination papers.

It exists because the employer must be able to show on what basis it pays wages and how it meets its duties. Not to collect every piece of paper a person brings in.

The personnel file is distinct from payroll records. The file says who the employee is and what was agreed with the employer; payroll uses that to calculate pay, tax and contributions. Documents such as the employee tax declaration or the data for insurer registrations sit on the boundary and must be available to both.

How it works in practice

GDPR sets the scope: only data necessary for the purpose may be processed. A copy of an ID card, children’s birth certificates or medical records generally do not belong there.

Payroll documents and payroll sheets carry their own retention periods, longer than ordinary HR papers. So a file is not simply split into "keep" and "delete" when someone leaves.

When we run a client’s payroll, a new starter triggers a simple request: the signed contract, the pay notice, the tax declaration and the data for insurer registrations. Originals stay with the employer; we work with copies limited to what payroll needs, and that is also how it is written in our data processing agreement.

What to watch out for

At offboarding the file is cleaned: delete what is no longer needed and archive the rest. Keeping everything "just in case" breaches the principle of data minimisation.

The second common mistake is access. A file in a shared folder the whole office can open is a problem even if it holds only necessary data. Pay and appraisals should be visible only to those who work with them, and access rights are changed as soon as someone moves role or leaves, not at the next clean-up.