Obtaining Your Personnel File

Any employee or former employee hired by any employer with four or more employees has the right to request a review of his or her personnel file.

Employees who wish to review their file must make a written request describing the personnel file to the employer. This request should include as many identifying factors as possible in order to facilitate the retrieval of the file, such as the requester’s name, Social Security number, job title, dates of employment, branch number, or location of the facility where they worked.

Employees may ask to see their personnel file at reasonable intervals, generally not more than two times in a calendar year.

The review shall take place at a location reasonably near the employee’s place of employment and during normal working hours. The employer may allow the review to take place at another time and location that would be more convenient to the employee.

Typically, if a former employee wishes to review a personnel file, the former employee would have to request in writing a copy of the information contained in his or her file.

After looking at the file, an employee may obtain a copy of the information contained in the file by requesting it from the employer in writing. If the employee is unable to review his or her personnel record, he or she must demonstrate this inability to the employer and then make a written request to the employer that a copy of the information in the personnel file is mailed to him or her.

Yes. An employer may charge a fee for providing a copy of all or part of the information contained in the personnel file. The fee shall be limited to the employer’s actual cost of duplicating the information in the file.

If the employee disagrees with information contained in a personnel file, removal or correction of that information may be mutually agreed upon by the employer and the employee. If an agreement cannot be reached, the employee may submit a written statement explaining his or her position, which will become a permanent part of the file. The written statement can be up to 5 sheets of 8-1/2 by 11-inch paper and must be included whenever the file is divulged to a third party.

The Act defines personnel records as information identifying an employee which is kept by an employer and which is used to determine an employee’s qualifications for employment, promotions, transfers, additional compensation, or disciplinary information.

The law does not require certain information to be open for review as a part of the personnel record, including:

– Materials disclosing an employer’s staff planning regarding more than 1 employee, such as salary increases, management bonus plans, promotions, and job assignments.

– Medical reports and records in an employer’s possession if the information is available to the employee from other sources.

– Notes kept by an executive, administrative, or professional employee which remain solely in the possession of the maker of the record, and are not seen by anyone else. However, a note concerning an occurrence or fact about an employee may be entered into the personnel file up to six months after the date of the occurrence or the date the fact becomes known. After this time, the information may not become part of the personnel file.