"Hot" files.

System

I have a file cabinet containing grievance complaints, discrimination claims, and sexual harassment folders - the 'hot' files. The claims are all closed having been determined to be "founded," "unfounded," or "inconclusive." The files contain all written complaints, interviews, my reports and conclusions. There is no duplicate information in the employee's own personnel file. These files are not available to anyone, including the employee, short of a court order.

What do you think? Is my method wrong? How long do you keep the hot files?

Whirlwind

I have a similar set of files, and I keep them as long as I keep the employees' personnel files. Our records retention schedule specifies that we keep personnel files for 5 years past the termination date. We then purge all but name, dates of employment, and positions held. When we do that five-year purge, I destroy the "hot files" that relate to that ee.

Gillian3

No, I think that you are wise to keep them private. I suppose I would keep the files on active employees and at some point, after the potential for litigation has passed, get rid of those of former employees.

HRinFL

These should not be contained with the ees' files. Since they are your investigations, no one else should have access to them (other than an attorney, if need be).

I have all of my files for the past five years. Most of these are closed, a few, not including active investigations, are still not resolved (thanks to our friendly government agencies that do not feel they need to get them resolved). I think the time you need to keep these depends on the type of case it was (is).

For internal complaints, keep them as long as you can. This is to have access to these prior complaints and how they were addressed should the ee file with an outside agency/attorney. The drawback to this is that these are not privileged documents, so they are subject to subpoena.

For outside agency complaints, I keep for one year past the statute of limitations. For example, once an ee that filed an EEOC charge gets the NORTS, they have ninety days to file suit. Keep your file at least that long. I would keep longer because normally, there are not any statutes to file in state court. It all depends on your space and what works for you. If you are not involved in a lot of litigation, I would say that you don't have to maintain that often. We are a large company and deal with these issues daily, so we maintain years worth of files.

LivindonSouth

I guess just out of sheer paranoia I would keep them until one day before I retire. G3 mentioned 'potential litigation' expiring. I don't know that you can accurately assess that. Since these files cannot take up that much room in a small municipal personel department, I'd keep them locked in my office virtually forever, which does not really correspond with my retiring, I hope.

pork1

I concurr with Don. The file drawer in our company is entitled "legal issues". I currently have one file that is into it's six year. It is a worker's Comp Case and the concerned individual has been locked up in the state penial system. I just got a scheduling date for the controvert action set for December 2005. I guess the individual will be getting out of the penial system, at that time.

We also have a individual laws suite that goes back to 1990. This case is coming to trial in the fall, there are several employees that are apart of this suite, if it were not for the personnel records some of the witnesses would not be able to participate. Our General Manager at the time has disappeared from the face of the earth. Even his mother does not know or want help us find him.

PORK

TN HR

I agree with the other posters. I, too, have a personal file drawer which my assistant, the President and the CFO (the only ones who know of its existence) jokingly refer to as the "X Files". There is nothing illegal about it. It includes details about investigations and such. There is everything from pictures and tape recordings to general correspondence. This never gets transferred to our off-site records storage and it never gets destroyed.

Gene

hhaynal

Catching up on my reading of advance sheets and came across this headline which I thought applicable to your post: "Are personal notes part of public records?" According to the Ohio Supreme Court, the answer is no. Because personal notes were taken for recollection of events of a meeting, investigation, etc, and the notes are NOT kept as part of an employee's official file, the court could not compel disclosure of the notes. State ex rel Cranford v. Cleveland, Supreme Court of Ohio, No. 2004-0490 (2004).

Just offering the above for whatever its worth.