ABSTRACT

There was a time when an employee who wanted to review his or her personnel folder would meet with a corporate human resource (HR) professional and flip page by page through a series of documents, including job and pay change forms, leave of absence requests, performance appraisals, letters of reprimand, hiring documentation and so forth. As computing and storage capabilities began to expand, many companies started recording and maintaining this information in electronic HR databases. Some of the earliest users created “homegrown” systems that may have recorded limited information for only the last few employment events (e.g., the employee’s current pay rate and his or her two prior pay rates), but these were quickly replaced by sophisticated relational data systems that recorded more detail on the employee and retained more historical information. Now, even employers with relatively few employees utilize some form of electronic HR system.