Setting Up Records and Personnel Files

All the information that you've accumulated about your new employee during the hiring process has a place. In fact, separate bits of information may have separate places. To create an efficient system of records and files, you need to know:

• if you need to maintain certain files
• what you have to keep and for how long
• who gets to see the information

For employers with fewer than 15 employees (and not subject to federal antidiscrimination laws), it's not that complicated. You don't even have to have files, per se, but you do have to have information. A file may be the easiest way to keep that information under control.