Accessibility of employee files

debs · August 2001

After an employee has been terminated can he/she come and request copies of papers from their employment file? If so, are there certain things they can and cannot have?

Gar · August 2001

In a previous HR assignment in private industry, we gave former employees copies of their personnel files upon request. We reserved the right to charge a fee for the copies. I also recall an instance in which our attorney advised us not to give an employee copies of her file because we had a strong belief the employee was going to use the information as evidence against us in future litigation.

Margaret Morford · August 2001

There's no federal law that requires you to do so, but many states have laws requiring that you furnish them the whole file or specific things in the file. Check your state law.

I always furnish them a copy because if you have done your documentation, it may scare off a lawyer and keep him/her from taking this person's case. If they sue you, they will be able to subpoena the file any way. However, we charged them 50 cents a page to cover time and cost to copy, payable up front in cash. We would tell them your file is fifty pages and they would have to bring us $25.00 before we would copy it. You'd be amazed how many people made a huge stink about wanting their file and then never showed up with the money. We did not permit them to pick and choose what they wanted and we copied everything, W-4 changes, benefit changes, address changes, etc.

Margaret Morford
theHRedge

pv25 · August 2001

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 08-17-01 AT 08:58AM (CST)[/font][p]>I always furnish them a copy because if you have done your
>documentation, it may scare off a lawyer and keep him/her from taking
>this person's case.

Double-edge sword, don't you think?

>If they sue you, they will be able to subpoena
>the file any way.

Sure, but you can enter into a confidentiality agreement.

Unless I was in a state that mandated access, I wouldn't let terminate employees have access to their files.

Anyway, here is a link that list what states allow access (although I have no idea whether its up to date: [link:www.elinfonet.com/state_output.php?orderby=Date%20DESC&category=54&topic=1|Access to Files]

Accessibility of employee files

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