HR Documentation Retention Policies and Practices: What to Keep and What to Toss

The first thing we all learn working in Human Resources is that we document everything...and that means everything.  While documentation of every event in a day, every comment overheard, every request made and every disciplinary conversation sounds great in theory, in reality, it is excessive, time-consuming, and impossible to execute.  So, why do we promote it?  Because the fear of not having the documentation when we need it creates the need to preserve everything.
 
The fact is that we don't need everything.  In fact, we don't want everything.  All too often, lawyers either receive nothing or way too much information from their clients, information that should have been shredded years before.  Both situations create disasters in defending companies.

• Compliance issues in document storage
• Documentation retention schedule policy do's and don'ts
• Litigation preparation:  litigation holds, subpoenas and the Federal Rules of Evidence
• Best practices in documenting issues in the workplace - the yes's, no's, and how's

The best way to create and preserve information is to follow a compliance schedule.  Having a set schedule gives you a reason why documents do not exist, a priority list of what documents and information to keep (and for how long), and a basis for creating, or not creating, documents.  A set schedule also establishes what information you should, and should not, have if a lawsuit arises.
 
If you find yourself constantly spending time on documentation, on guessing what should exist and for how long, or how to prioritize documentation retention, you need to attend this webinar.  We will give you a set of tools for documentation creation, maintenance, retention schedules, and litigation preparation (just in case).

• Chief Human Resource Officers
• HR Managers
• Directors, and Benefit  Administrators
• Records Management Professionals
• Anyone with direct administrative responsibilities for employee-related file retention
• Anyone with leadership oversight of employee-related information
• Business owners who have no HR manager or staff
• Internal Auditors

Deirdre Kamber Todd, Esq., is a partner with The Kamber Law Group, P.C., a next-generation law firm located in Allentown, Pennsylvania. With fifteen years of experience, Deirdre focuses her practice on labor and employment law, social media and technology law, HIPAA, and business law. Specific areas of her employment law practice include discrimination, wage and hour, restrictive covenants, business contracts, unemployment compensation, LGBT issues, labor disputes, FMLA, military leave, social media litigation, information privacy and technology, agency compliance, and medical record privacy.  

Her clients include companies, non-profits, governmental entities, and individuals. Her work includes consultative and legal services, from outsourced HR and social media services to hearings, litigation, and appellate work. She also regularly provides training and education for companies and individuals. She is licensed to practice in New York, Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Supreme Court, and she also has been admitted as an expert witness in social media and networking. 

Deirdre is the recipient of a number of awards and recognitions: she was selected as one of the “Top 20 Under 40” by the Pennsylvania Business Journal, she received the Ethics Award from the New York State Bar Association, she received a grant from the Public Justice Foundation for her pro bono work on HIV/AIDS, and she was recently nominated as one of the top twenty-five women of influence in the Lehigh Valley. 

Aside from the practice of law, she serves as the President and Diversity Chair for Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) Lehigh Valley. She currently teaches as an adjunct professor at DeSales University in the MBA Program in both the HR and Healthcare Concentrations. She has earned her Juris Doctor from Hofstra University School of Law, a distinguished master’s degree in International Studies from the University of Limerick, in Limerick, Ireland, and a bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University.