Continued from Best Practices for Employee Recordkeeping Part 1
In my previous post about Employee Recordkeeping, I detailed how Massachusetts businesses can effectively organize their employee information. Clients also ask about best practices for maintaining payroll, tax, and other personal information to best protect their interests.
This post covers:
- Maintenance of payroll records
- Storing personal data
- How to Store important I-9 documentation
In addition to the personnel file you must maintain payroll records that should include the following
- Name
- SS #
- Address
- Date of birth if under the age of 19
- Gender
- Occupation
- Total wages paid each pay period
- Rate of pay
- Basis on which employee’s wages are paid (Hourly, Salary as examples)
- Total daily or weekly straight-time earnings
- Overtime compensation
- Total weekly OT premiums
- Additions to or deductions from wages each pay period and amount and nature of each item
- Date of payment and pay period covered
- Time and day on which work week begins
- Hours worked each day and each week (time records)
- Date and amount of promotion or demotion received by employee
Massachusetts law is also fairly clear about how to store personal information.
According to the law, “A personnel record shall not include information of a personal nature about a person other than the employee if disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of such other person’s privacy.” As such, Medical Records, (e.g., health insurance, doctor’s notes, requests for accommodation, etc.) should be kept in a file separate from the personnel/payroll records. Also include in this file the date and description of any employee work-related accidents.
Finally, one of the biggest issues I see when assessing employee personnel files is that employers keep their I-9 forms in the personnel/payroll records. This is not advisable for a variety of reasons and while a subject for another post, we regularly advise clients to put all completed I-9 forms in a single file or binder which can be organized by date or by last name. The accurate completion and update (should it be necessary) of I-9s is a critical human resources responsibility.