Human Resource Blog

Filing Write Up

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If a person is written up for discipline or accident; does it have to be filed in their folder? Can we make up our own system of how we file it? I am in S.C. Thanks for whatever help you can give me on this issue.

It is considered a best practice in the HR industry to keep disciplinary warnings or “write ups” in the personnel folder with performance evaluations and other information on the employee. It’s not strictly illegal for the employer to keep the write ups somewhere else, but the question would be, “Why? Why would an employer want to do this?”

The purpose of the personnel file is to provide a complete history of the employee’s performance, especially as it relates to promotions, transfers and future employment decisions.

If Todd has been written up 3 times for excessive tardiness, surely that would be important information for his supervisor to have when making future employment decisions.

And frankly, if Todd’s supervisor doesn’t think the situation is serious enough to warrant inclusion in the personnel file, maybe Todd shouldn’t be written up at all.

It’s also a little odd that the question refers to an employee being written up for an “accident.” While employees can certainly be written up for not following safety procedures, the question seems to imply that employees may be disciplined through no fault of their own.

Two federal laws, plus several state laws, require that employers keep certain information separate from the personnel file. Both HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, require that medical  information be kept separate. Medical information may include doctor’s notes for absences, info on a disability or information on a workers’ comp claim.

Medical information is kept separate because information on an employee’s medical condition, or a disability, should not have any effect on employment decision. The best way to ensure this is to keep a separate “confidential” employee folder that contains all the workers’ privileged information.

However, write ups are information that should be included in the employee’s standard personnel file.