My company just completed the exercise of obtaining all of the legal research for retention and limitation of claims relating to all employee/employment categories of records across 14 jurisdictions, including the US and UK. Our research confirms exactly what you cite below for retention of employee personnel file materials at 7 years after termination of employment. It also confirms the exception of 40 years after termination of employment for any records relating to employee hazardous materials exposure. However, the key word here is "exposure." In other words, my interpretation of the 40-year rule applies to relevant records relating to specific incidents of employee exposure to hazardous materials/hazardous conditions in the workplace, plus other programmatic records created/maintained by the Human Resources department relating to hazardous materials exposure incidents not specifically related to individual employees, e.g., details of the incident, remediation steps taken, post-incident inspection records, etc. However, the 40-year rule does not cover records documenting general training on hazardous materials handling in the workplace. My interpretation is that unless the records pertain to a specific exposure incident, the 40-year rule doesn't apply. Instead, I recommended a retention period of 7 years after record creation for general human resources training program materials (regardless of training subject). I'm interested to see if others agree.
--Lee
Lee R. Nemchek, MLS, CRM
Vice President, Records Management
Oaktree Capital Management, L.P.
333 South Grand Avenue, 28th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90071
p +1 213 830-6252 f +1 213 830-8504
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www.oaktreecapital.com
-----Original Message-----
From: The UK Records Management mailing list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sarah Graham
Sent: Thursday, January 07, 2010 2:51 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Occupational Health Training Records
We currently retain our personnel files for 7 years after termination of employment. These files contain training records for staff as well as the usual recruitment information etc...
However, it has been raised that there needs to be a lengthy retention period for Occupational Health Training records - these need to be maintained for a lengthy period due to the potential for claims. As a council we need to maintain evidence that the necessary training / awareness raising was done.
The insurance department tell me that some of these claims can go back to the 1960s, due to asbestos related illnesses. Therefore, we'd be looking at a
potential 50 year retention period.
Clearly, we do not want to keep all personnel files for 50 years in order to cover one records series. The personnel file department do not have the
resources to weed the Occupational Health Training items out of the personnel file on an individual basis but the insurance department are concerned about claims that could run into millions and us having destroyed the evidence after 7 years.
My thoughts are to have the Directorates keep the Occupational Health Training records in a separate file created specifically for that purpose. This
seems to the the most obvious conclusion.
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