Terminated Employee requesting Personnel Files
kikalee
4 Posts
We're located in Arizona. By law does the company have to provide active and terminated employees with copies of the personnel files if requested. Also, how long does a former employee have to request his/her records after the date of termination?
Comments
Arizona doesn't have a law requiring private employers to provide employees access to their personnel records either during their employment or after termination. However, if you are served with a subpoena for the records, this changes your obligations. Also, public employees have the right to view their personnel records.
Hope this helps.
According to this article from HR Magazine: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3495/is_6_52/ai_n19311781
"Only Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia have little or no legislation on the issue. But even in those states, there may be separate statutes applying in limited situations." However, the article only says that Arizona employees are entitled to see their drug test results, which I would consider to be a related law. Technically speaking, drug test info is medical info and it should not be in an employee file. So, there may be related laws but I don't see anything directly on access to the employee file for Arizona. Two other professional web sites I have access to do not show any law for Arizona on the topic but the fact that there's something out there about access suggests that you may want to talk to an attorney depending on what the person is asking for. It wouldn't hurt to find out why they're asking, either.
There's more to the article in the online version if you have access to it. A word of caution from the author is "State statutes are so dissimilar that it’s essential for HR managers to check the laws in their own states." I'm very conservative on this and do not typically provide documents that I am not required to provide by law, subpoena, or other legal mechanism. "I'm sorry, that's an internal company document and I cannot share it with you."