HR document management: how to organise employee files
How to organise HR documents: contracts, payslips, certificates, permits, signature, retention, permissions and employee access.
DG
Daniel García
Co-founder · CTO @ Orquiva · Upd. 12 Jun 2026
HR document management often starts in Drive and ends in a mix of folders, emails and duplicated PDFs. The problem appears when you need to find something quickly or prove who accessed what.
Documents you should centralise
- Contracts
- Addenda
- Payslips
- Certificates
- Signed policies
- Absence documents
- Asset handovers
Minimum permissions
HR should not share whole folders when only one document is needed. Define permissions by role, document type and employee.
Retention and deletion
Each document type has different needs. Not everything should be kept equally or deleted at the same time.
Signature and traceability
When a document requires acknowledgement, signature and audit trail should stay with the employee file.