How long do we need to keep the personnel record of a terminated employee?

This was a question that was asked during a meeting recently while discussing the records inventory of their department records. The meeting was with two individuals who were both fairly new to the company. I asked them how long they retained the same record at their previous employer and was surprised to hear that one of the individual’s company retained the record for three (3) years and the other individual’s company retained the record permanently. I had always considered the retention of terminated personnel records as 6 years (current year, plus 6) as the standard.

I decided to develop an informal survey utilizing an internet on-line company (SurveyMonkey.com) and created a web survey of the Records Management Listserv members to see what retention periods for terminated employee files the members used for their organizations. The results are as follows:

NR Yr % # Responses

3 years 4.7% - 2

4 years7.0% -3

5 years7.0% -3

6 years9.3% - 4

6 years (current year plus 6)18.6% - 8

7 years18.6% - 8

10 years11.6% - 5

20 years2.3% - 1

Permanent20.9% - 9

While not a scientific study, it did reflect some interesting results that somewhat amazed me. Note that the majority of the responses (20) reflect retentions of 6-7 years which, depending on how you establish your retention periods, probably equal the same amount of time.

Although the survey did not indicate the reasons for the longer retention periods (10 years to permanent), my guess is that some organizations have other documents included in the file, such as medical and payroll that may have a longer retention requirement based on local state legal requirements.

The federal citations I found that had the word ‘personnel file’ were:

Citation Retention

29 CFR 1602.31 ACT+2

29 CFR 1627.3(a) CR+3

29 CFR 1627.3(b)(1) CR+1

29 CFR 825.500(b) CR+3

29 CFR 1602.14 CR+1

29 CFR 1602.14 ACT

29 CFR 1602.31 ACT+2

The State of Washington retention guidelines for Local Government Agencies has an established retention of T+6 for personnel files. While they do not include the legal citation I have always assumed that they were using the Federal legal requirement and the State of Washington Statue of Limitation on Contracts which is SL (Statue of Limitations), plus 6 years as outlined in Washington RCW 4.16.040. (

I would highly recommend reviewing your state retention period for personnel records, if your state government has a records management program and publishes their retention schedules. ( Remember, the public sector must follow Federal laws as well as the private sector.

The full survey results can be found at

Bob Dalton, CRM of Dalton Consulting

Note: My thanks to Barbara Werelius, Records Manager and Guru at Tacoma Public Utilities, for her assistance in the development of this article and also the Puget Sound Chapter of ARMA.