Human resources records management

All businesses produce many critical documents related to client work. However, some of the most important documents in any company are those related to its employees and human resources – rather than its clients. Human resources records management is an essential business consideration.

These documents contain a range of information, such as employee salary details, their contact details, the number of hours they’ve clocked, and any absences they may have taken. Given the sensitive nature of this information, your employees expect office managers, administrators and HR executives to manage and store their personal records and HR documents correctly.

Digitalisation and the use of cloud-based HR software has helped to reduce the volume of paperwork and physical records in some businesses. However, larger companies with many more employees will have a far greater amount of HR documents to manage.

In addition to organisational needs, legislation will require your company to retain physical copies of employee records. To ensure total compliance, businesses must be aware of the statutory retention periods for certain information.

Some examples include:

• The Companies Act 1985, which requires companies to keep accounting records for three to six years;
• The Taxes Management Act 1970, which stipulates that companies must retain wage and salary records for six years;
• The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 1999 and 2002, which say medical records must be kept for 40 years from the date of the last entry.

 The risks of poor human resources records management

• Sensitive information is much more vulnerable to loss and theft. This increased security risk can damage a company’s reputation;
• Functional office space is greatly reduced by on-site document storage. As boxes pile up, it gets much harder to find files in a cluttered, disorganised environment;
• If your HR records management system fails to meet data retention regulations, your company could face severe penalties for non-compliance.

The reality is that not all documents have the same storage requirements. Some need to be accessed on a routine basis, others not at all, and then there are those emergency situations when you need to pull a file at a moment’s notice.

The challenge is that companies can’t keep them all on-site. The solution lies in developing an outsourced employee records retention strategy that allows companies to store and archive their documents, while simultaneously allowing them to access the files at very short notice.

Our HR records management solutions

At Access Records Management, we offer an end-to-end document storage and management service for all types of business documents, especially for those all-important employee records.

Our services include:

• Collection, storage, retrieval and couriering.
• Dead file storage for files that are not needed for long periods
• Document scanning for digitising files
• Secure shredding for files that no longer need to be retained.
• Advice and consultation on your retention strategy.
• Secure storage facilities. Boxes are protected against flooding and fire. Plus, we offer locked data rooms for particularly sensitive documents.

We pride ourselves on our customer service. We balance quality with reasonable pricing and can even deliver tailored collection and retrieval schedules for important documents that are needed on a regular basis. Our North London base means that we are particularly well positioned to serve hundreds of companies across the City.

How your business benefits from our off-site storage

• It reduces the amount of file administration and security issues.
• It frees up resources to focus on more strategic work.
• It creates more office space for income-generating work.
• Your documents are managed and stored efficiently. Our archival system is thorough, enabling you to retrieve files as and when you need to.

Why Access Records Management?

Our team delivers record management services to hundreds of companies across a variety of sectors such financial services, insurance, law, architecture, and medicine.

We are a privately-owned company that has been operating successfully for 25 years. The Access Records Management team has a collective experience of over 40 years. That, combined with our strict security focus (we have an ISO:9001 standard certification), means we can handle both large and small business needs with ease.

If you need assistance with HR records management, give the Access Records Management team a call today.