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Personnel file – content, structure, rights, obligations

Personnel file
from Leni

Personnel file – content, structure, rights, obligations

Today, in most companies a personnel file is kept for each employee. Not because it is obligatory – no – but because it is in the interest of both parties. In Germany, there is only an obligation to keep a personnel file in the public sector (authorities), but not in the private sector. 

What is a personnel file?

An exact regulation of what is meant by a personnel file can only be found in civil service law. Section 106 (1) of the Federal Civil Service Act (BBG) states:

“The personnel file includes all documents relating to the civil servant insofar as they have a direct internal connection with his or her employment relationship (personnel file data). Other documents may not be included in the personnel file.”

Based on this definition, we find a very similar description in many business and legal encyclopedias. So, we can say that a personnel file is a collection of all documents/data concerning an individual employee, which usually depicts all information relevant to the employment relationship.

Most companies have already moved away from paper personnel files and are now creating electronic personnel files. 

Which documents belong in a personnel file? And which documents do not belong in it?

Since there are no legal requirements in Germany for either the form or the content of a personnel file, this can be different from company to company. Some are very detailed, while others contain only the most important data and information. What ultimately ends up in the file is decided by the company itself. This does not mean that the employer may now collect all information about an employee and keep it in the file. NO! All information in a personnel file must be directly related to the employment relationship. The following is a list of documents that are often found in a personnel file:

Personal data

  • Application documents (cover letter, resume, references)
  • Personal data (name, address)
  • Work or residence permit, if applicable
  • Employment references / performance appraisals
  • Official certificates of good conduct (for positions of trust)
  • Note on membership of works council
  • Promotions
  • Further training and education

Contract-related documents

  • Employment contract
  • Statements on secondary employment
  • Agreements on parental leave
  • Letter of termination

Social security documents

  • Social security card
  • Registration and proof of health insurance

Tax documents

  • Salary or wage statements
  • Payroll tax documents
  • Information about loans or wage garnishments

Other documents

  • Correspondence between employer and employee
  • Reports of workplace accidents
  • Warnings (may or may not be deleted)
  • Personnel questionnaire
  • Sickness certificates / records of the company doctor (but only those where the employer has a right to be informed!)
  • vacation requests and approvals
  • Possible counterstatements of the employee

Official documents in copy

  • Driver’s license
  • Divorce decree
  • Disability certificate

Of course, there are also data / documents that an employer is not allowed to keep in the personnel file. First and foremost, this is information that concerns your privacy and has no relevance to your professional activities.

This includes, among other things:

  • Sick days and absences of an employee (sick notes may be collected, but no notation of when or why you are sick)
  • psychological evaluations
  • Content from the employee’s social media account
  • Medical records
  • Private preferences
  • Sexual preferences

Who has access to my personnel file? What rights do I have related to my personnel file?

Access to personnel files is generally limited to a few authorized individuals. 

  1. The employee himself: The employee has the right to request inspection of his or her personnel file at any time (even after termination of employment). It is important to exercise this right to verify that the employer is not storing any unauthorized information about you. You can also make notes and copies of individual components from your file, request/give an opinion on individual points and contents, and have incorrect information changed/deleted.
  2. The employer/supervisor
  3. The Human Resources Department: employees of the Human Resources Department who are responsible for managing personnel files can also access the information in the file.
  4. In exceptional cases and only with the employee’s consent, outside consultants or attorneys may also have access to the personnel file.

It is important to note that access to the personnel file is regulated by data protection and labor laws in many countries. Companies must therefore make sure that they comply with these laws and that unauthorized persons do not have access to personnel files.

Summary

A personnel file, regardless of whether it is in paper or electronic form, is a collection of work-related information / documents of the employee. And it must comply with certain guidelines (data protection).

In the age of digitalization, personnel files in paper form are becoming increasingly rare. More and more the documents of a personnel file are entered into an electronic directory by an EDP system. To automate this and save you even more time in processing this data, we have developed DOC². DOC² is a simple and intelligent data processing software solution that uses AI swarm intelligence and machine learning to effectively read and process data from documents.

You want to know how this can look concretely in your case?

Do not hesitate and contact us and we will show you.

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Personnel file

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We have received the order and it is being processed…

confirmation
from Leni

We have received the order and it is being processed…

Ever heard or received a message of this kind? For sure. Everyone who has ordered from Amazon, has also ever received a message about the acceptance of his order. This message is nothing more than the so-called order confirmation (AB). It serves to fix a previously created order or customer order again in writing (by mail, fax or mail). The writing of an order confirmation is not obligatory and is also not bound to a certain form. However, it has become so common that it can be regarded as a rule today.

By sending an order confirmation, misunderstandings can be prevented, as everything can be recorded and checked in writing. In the case of a verbal/telephone order, it can be used as a reassurance. It informs the customer about the current status and gives him more security. And if a dispute should arise, the order confirmation can serve as evidence.

In order for an order confirmation to be valid as a piece of evidence, it should contain the following information:

  • Description and quantity of the goods
  • Price / cost of freight and packaging
  • Date of production and delivery (expected)
  • Regulation on delivery
  • Terms of payment
  • Retention of title / reference to the general terms and conditions of business
  • Contact person / contact details

Of course, just like invoices or orders, order confirmations are among the documents in a company that need to be processed. 

And this is exactly where we come into play. With our DOC² software solution, developed precisely for this area, we help you to process documents in a simple and intelligent way. DOC² is based on an AI swarm intelligence and has the ability to keep learning (machine learning). DOC² is not only able to read header data, but much more.

You want to know what? Do not hesitate to contact us.

We will be happy to make an appointment with you and show you what is possible with DOC².

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confirmation

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Online retail lives on it …

Order
from Leni

Online retail lives on it …

Without any order, online retail cannot survive. But orders are also the order of the day in manufacturing companies or for service providers. Orders are documents that companies either place or receive. But what is meant by “purchase order”? What must be included in a purchase order?  What types are there?

A purchase order refers to an order to a supplier to deliver a specific good

It is likewise a binding declaration of intent by the buyer to purchase goods on the specified terms. Purchase orders are legally binding, meaning that the supplier is obligated to deliver the goods on the agreed terms and the buyer/customer has an obligation to accept and pay in return.

Although a purchase order is not bound to any particular form, it should be clearly written to eliminate errors/misunderstandings.

The following items should be included in a purchase order regardless of the transmission method (letter, fax, mail, electronic): 

  • General data (address of the purchaser and the supplier,..)
  • Reference to the offer
  • order explanation / order number
  • exact information about the ordered goods (price quantity)
  • terms of delivery and payment.
  • if necessary reference to the AGBs

Legally seen (BGB §§ 145 ff) an order is either an application or an acceptance. For example, if you receive an offer from a supplier and then place an order, this is called an acceptance. In this case, the purchase contract is concluded under the conditions stated in the offer.

On the other hand, if an order is placed without a prior offer, it is called a request. In this case, the supplier usually confirms the order by means of an order confirmation, and a purchase contract is then concluded as a result.

In a company, compiling or placing a purchase order is often a routine purchasing task. But purchase orders, just like invoices, are documents that need to be processed. With DOC², we want to support you in exactly this. DOC² is our software solution for intelligent and simple document processing. It is based on KI swarm intelligence, is constantly learning and gives you real added value in the area of document processing. You gain time that you can invest elsewhere. And time, as we all know, is money. 🤑

Want to learn more about how this is possible?

Then don’t hesitate to ask us.

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order

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How you can work with other companies to automate your document processing

from

How you can work with other companies to automate your document processing

This might seem contradictory at first sight but it is really possible to optimize your processes by working in a community with other companies and even your competitors. This can be simply achieved by introducing swarmintelligence. So what does this term exactly mean?

Swarm intelligence is a branch of AI that uses the collective work of people to train the specific AI model. Let’s take document processing as an example. The amount of different document structures and layouts that suppliers use is unlimited, which makes it sometimes a difficult task for document capturing softwares to automatically classify and extract the documents. The solution here is the introduction of swarm intelligence. The biggest advantage is that nobody does the work alone, since the training is shared between many companies and their users.

processing

With DOC² we have integrated swarm intelligence to our AI-based repository to easily automate document processing. This means that our customers share the same Cloud-based repository where they can create, delete and manage the classification and extraction rules for their document processing. If company A processes all their supplier documents and trains the software with a simple click, company B, C, D & E can profit from already-trained document types and layouts. It’s a win-win situation for everybody!

Companies can forget about configuring and programming supplier-based templates and can already profit from a self-learning system with DOC².

processing

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When are documents ready for automation?

When are documents ready for automation?

One of the most important benefits of document automation is the ability to read and process documents without human intervention. By automating routine tasks, companies can thus save time and money. However, in order for a document to be processed automatically, it must first be trained properly. This blog post discusses when a document is suitable for automation and how you can train your documents.

In Doc², you can see directly via the AI indicator how well the document is trained. The AI indicator is a measure of how well the OCR engine has been trained to recognise the document. The higher the score, the less likely it is that a human will need to intervene to ensure the document is processed correctly.

After each successful export, the AI indicator automatically increases. If someone intervenes in the document and changes the rules for the document, the AI indicator will be negatively affected.

For automatic document capture, the documents should be processed at least 4-5 times without any changes and the AI indicator should be at least 50%.

In the example we train a new invoice and export it 5 times with different values.

The first time the document is read in, the AI indicator is at the minimum level:

Let’s train the document and export it for the first time:

This way, the fields are read automatically when they are exported again and we get a recognition score that shows the read quality for the current document:

Furthermore, for each successful export, the AI indicator is influenced so that it will gradually move from the red to the green area in the graph.

Documentation: AI Indicators