Briefing note for the Human Resources Director:
The organisations approach to collecting, storing and
The use of H.R data.

Purpose:
The purpose of this briefing note is to review options to the business regarding the collection, storage and use of collected H.R data.

Background:
It has been requested that the organisations current policy regarding the above should be reviewed and where necessary, improved/amended based on the findings.

Current situation:
At present the following data is collected by the Human Resources department; * Personal Data. * Staff Turnover. * Absence Data. * Learning and Development Data. * Cost information. * Survey Data. * Performance of Employees. * Health and Safety.

Some of the above data must be collected by law for legislative purposes. Other data is gathered and stored by H.R for use either as benchmarks or as an aide to future business growth.

For instance Health and Safety data is stored for legal compliance and includes the storage of accident books and RIDDOR incidents (Appendix 1) that have occurred within the work place.
This information may be used by the health and safety officer to reduce the number of accidents. If a number of incidents were reported involving staff using ladders, then a trend may be spotted from the stored accident data. This could then be used and less hazardous equipment utilised.

An example of data which is not legally required to be kept, but may be useful is customer feedback. Keeping this feedback may aid a H.R department, to benchmark standards of customer service given by staff. For example if a member of staff were to offer consistently poor service to customers and customer feedback data showed this-then the data could be used to show a trend and would enable the H.R department to put in place an appropriate course of action, such as further of staff to improve standards.

Data Storage Methods;
There a different ways in which collected data may be stored. Namely traditional paper based or electronic storage on a computer.

A paper based system may have the following advantages: * Easy to setup (i.e. use of index cards in a drawer system) * Easy for any staff to maintain/build (no special skills required)

Electronic storage may have the following advantages: * Smaller space footprint (unlimited files on a computer takes no more space than the computer, whereas a thousand paper files would take up a huge amount of space). * Software to enable the setup and maintenance of data is available freely and in some cases may be free with the computer system.

Essential HR Data Recording;

Below are two examples of essential H.R data that must be stored by the organisation as required by English law. * The storage of accounting records, these must be stored for a period of 3 years for private companies, 6 years for public limited companies. This is covered by Section 221 of the Companies Act 1985 as modified by the Companies Acts 1989 and 2006. This states that the business’ accounts must be kept and may include income, expenditure, profit, loss and elements such as V.A.T (Value Added Tax). These records must be made available to H.M Revenue and Customs and other government agencies where required.

* The storage of wage/salary records must be stored for six years. This is covered by Taxes Management Act 1970. Records must be kept of wages, salary and taxes paid by an employee. The records must be available to government agencies such as H.M.R.C, as well as being made available to staff/former staff when requested.

Appendix 1

The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013, often known by the acronym RIDDOR, is a 2013 Statutory Instrument of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It regulates the statutory obligation to report deaths, injuries, diseases and "dangerous occurrences", including near misses, that take place at work or in connection with work.