What does your employer keep about you?
The fullest file anyone holds on you belongs to your employer: identity documents, pay, health notes, complaints, and years of your own written words. Most of it outlives the job. Some of that is required by law, and the rest is the company protecting itself in case you ever bring a claim.
If it leaks
An HR file leaked is a whole person: identity documents, pay, health notes, disciplinaries, and years of your own messages. Enough to impersonate you, and enough to read your worst week at work. None of it can be reissued.
What repeats in the files
The file is bigger than you think
An HR file holds the application that got you the job, right-to-work identity copies, performance reviews, disciplinary and grievance records, absence and health notes, and the references that arrived when you joined. Around it sits what the workplace logged: email and chat archives, door entries, CCTV.
Leaving does not close it
Some holds are set by law: payroll records three years, minimum-wage records six, pension records six, right-to-work copies for two years after you leave. The rest is habit: many employers keep the whole file about six years after you go, which tracks the window in which you could still bring a claim. That part is their choice, not a duty.
The reference you can never read
A confidential reference is exempt from your right of access at both ends: the company that wrote it and the company that received it can each refuse to show you. It is the one part of your own file the law lets them keep from you.
What lawfully stays, and what they choose to keep
Two kinds of hold. Law sets it: a statute makes them keep it. They set it: a period the company grants itself.
Payroll records Law sets it 3 years
PAYE regulations: three years after the end of the tax year.
Minimum-wage records Law sets it 6 years
National Minimum Wage Regulations, raised from three years in 2021.
Pension records Law sets it 6 years
Auto-enrolment record duties, with opt-out notices four years.
Right-to-work copies Law sets it 2 years after leaving
Home Office guidance: the length of the employment plus two years, then destroy.
Accident and injury records Law sets it 3 years
Accident book entries and reportable-injury records.
Maternity pay records Law sets it 3 years
Counted from the end of the tax year the pay period falls in.
The whole HR file They set it ~6 years after leaving
No law sets this, it tracks the window in which a claim could still be brought.
Monitoring archives They set it their call
Email, chat, door and camera records have no set period in law, and the regulator asks for the shortest the purpose needs.
Where it travels
This file is rarely sold, but it is shown around. A reference summarising you goes to the next employer, screening firms check pieces of it, group companies share HR systems, and in any dispute it becomes the evidence on both sides.
Before you ask
A subject access request reaches more of this file than people expect: interview notes, monitoring data, the file itself. A confidential reference is the exception. While you are employed, the request is read by the people you work with, so the timing is worth thinking about. The right does not expire, and a leaving date is a natural moment. Log the date it arrives, and treat what it says as their claim.
Their own policy is the one that binds them. Pin it down with a request, and keep the reply.