Employee document management for a small employer is one file per person and a rule for how long each thing in it is kept: the contract, the identity checks, the reviews, the leave records, the disciplinary notes, the payslips. Most small employers keep it in a folder tree, and the trouble shows up twice: when a former employee asks what the firm holds, and when a file that should have been destroyed years ago is still there. The free document capture worksheet on this site sizes the pages a year the firm takes in and what the retention period keeps; Batesio Pro holds each person's file with every page numbered and dated. What the law requires a firm to keep or destroy is the adviser's to confirm.
One file per person, filed on capture
Every document about a person goes into their file the day it is captured, numbered and dated, against the matter it belongs to: onboarding, a review, a grievance. A file assembled from a folder tree at the moment it is needed is a file with gaps.
A retention date on every document
The contract, the identity check and the payslip are kept for different lengths under most policies, so the date is set per document on capture and the year-end report says what may be destroyed. The worksheet on this site prints the pages and boxes a retention period keeps at your intake.
Access, logged
Who opened which employee's file and when is a record most small employers cannot produce, and the one they most need when a complaint arrives. The portal logs access the same way it logs uploads; the drive, at Dropbox's $15 per user per month for its Standard team plan cited below, does not know the file is an employee's.
Questions people ask about employee document management
Is a folder per employee enough?
Until someone asks what the firm holds on them, or a document that should have been destroyed turns up. A file with numbered, dated documents and a retention date on each is what answers both.
How long should employee documents be kept?
Whatever the employer's regulator and adviser require, per class of document; the worksheet takes the period as an input and prints what it keeps.
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