EEOC Recordkeeping Compliance with AutoRecords for M-Files

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission requires businesses to retain for certain periods personnel and employment records that are created over the course of your business operations. These records include those documenting compensation, promotions, demotions, hiring, and even applications submitted by prospective recruits. M-Files with AutoRecords can help you keep these documents straight and ensure that you retain documents in accordance with EEOC guidelines.

Suppose that you are a small business with a handful of employees. You have documents spanning the past several years that record your hiring and layoff decisions and performance reviews, along with employment applications and requests for reasonable accommodation. After careful consideration of your situation, you’ve discovered that the EEOC requires you to retain employee documents according to the following schedule:

1. Private employers must retain such records for one year from the date of making the record or the personnel action involved, whichever occurs later, but in the case of involuntary termination of an employee, they must retain the terminated employee's personnel or employment records for one year from the date of termination.
2. Where a charge of discrimination has been filed under Title VII, the ADA, or GINA, or where a civil action has been brought by the Commission or the Attorney General, the respondent private employer, state or local government employer, educational institution employer, labor union, or apprenticeship committee must retain all records related to the charge or action until final disposition of the charge or action. The date of final disposition means the date of expiration of the statutory period within which the aggrieved person may bring an action in a U.S. District Court or, where such an action has been brought, the date on which such litigation is terminated.

Furthermore, suppose that you’ve decided it is best for your business to retain all employee-related documents for the entire duration of employment, and only delete them after an employee is terminated. Retaining them for a year after their termination, regardless of whether it was a resignation or not, will still maintain compliance with EOCC standards.

Traditional folder-based document storage solutions are cumbersome and prone to errors during retention. Employee documents may be located in a complicated folder hierarchy, perhaps alongside non-employment documents and documents related to more than one employee. How do you ensure that only those documents for terminated employees are deleted, and not those documents associated with current employees?

M-Files, an industry leader in document management, uses a metadata-centric approach to store and organize your documents, bypassing the difficulties posed by traditional folder-oriented document storage solutions. Each document falls into a specific class, and each class of documents has a specific set of metadata properties. In addition to storing documents, M-Files is an excellent repository for non-document information, such as employees. For our small business example, the metadata structure for our employee documents will look like this:

• Employee
  1. Name
  2. Date Hired
  3. Date Terminated
• Application
  1. Candidate Name
  2. Date Filed
  3. Date of Decision
• Performance Review
  1. Date of Review
  2. Employee
• Layoff Form
  1. Begin Consideration Date
  2. Date of Execution
  3. Employee
• Compensation Package
  1. Begin Consideration Date
  2. Date of Execution
  3. Employee

AutoRecords for M-Files leverages the metadata-centric approach of M-Files to automatically perform retention on documents according to flexible user-defined categories and schedules. These are the basic concepts of AutoRecords, and how each concept maps to our small business example.

• Policy – This is an AutoRecords configuration object that is used to specify which objects in M-Files will receive AutoRecords retention management. We will have two policies that apply two Retention Categories, lining up with our Application class and our Employee-related documents classes.
  1. Application Policy – This policy will apply the Application Retention Category to all documents of the Application Class. All applications will be deleted 1 year after the date of decision.
  2. Employee Policy - This policy will apply the Employee-Related Documents Retention Category to the employee and all documents that reference the employee through metadata, including performance reviews, layoff forms, and compensation packages. After one year has passed since the Termination Date of the employee, these documents will be deleted.
• Retention Category – this is an AutoRecords configuration object that is applied to documents inside of M-Files by a Policy, and that specifies an Event Template that will be used to manage the lifecycle of all objects with the Retention Category. All objects that we want AutoRecords to manage must have a Retention Category applied. We will have two retention categories, one for Applications and another for Employee-related documents.
• Event Template – this is an AutoRecords configuration object that specifies what retention action we want to perform on documents, which metadata properties trigger the retention action, and a time period for AutoRecords to wait after the trigger condition is met before performing the action. The Action we want to perform is deletion. The property that will trigger retention on Applications will be the Date of Decision. We will wait for a period of one year before performing the deletion. The property that will trigger retention for Employee documents is the Termination Date property, and we will wait for a period of one year before deletion. For Employee documents, we will use a special trigger called an Indirect Trigger. These triggers are used when we wish to perform retention on related documents. While the Termination Date metadata property on the Employee object drives the retention events, we wish to delete those documents that reference this employee. By specifying the Employee property on the Indirect Trigger in addition to the Termination Date, we can tell AutoRecords to perform retention on those documents that reference an Employee through the Employee property.
• Holds – The requirement that all employment documents are retained for at least a year after execution is satisfied by the configurations defined above. But what about the case where litigation requires us to retain documents for a longer period than that defined in our policies? Holds can be configured that tell AutoRecords to skip retention activities for either a specified or indeterminate time for documents of your choosing. If a Title VII case is brought against you, you can place a hold on all documents related to the employee the case is brought on behalf of, ensuring that they are not deleted until the date specified and that your business continues to maintain EOCC compliance.

Once AutoRecords is configured with your user-defined actions, triggers, retention categories, and policies, the hard work is done. AutoRecords takes it from there, using your configuration to retain and delete your employee documents while maintaining regulatory compliance. Though this was intended to be a simple example, the retention schedule for employment documents can still be difficult to implement, and your own business case may be more difficult still. AutoRecords is flexible enough to handle nearly any retention schedule or complicated retention rules that your business may require. Reach out to TEAM IM today and let us show you how AutoRecords can meet even your most complicated document retention challenges.