HR documentation: document list, retention periods and best practices

The essential HR documents are the employment contract, pay slips, the registre unique du personnel (France's mandatory staff register) and the document unique d'évaluation des risques professionnels (DUERP, the mandatory occupational risk assessment document): they ensure compliance, provide evidence in the event of an inspection and keep employee records continuous. Managing them also has to meet specific GDPR requirements, set out in the CNIL framework on retention periods (the CNIL is France's data protection authority). This guide details the periods to observe, the rules for going paperless and how to set up a reliable document management system.

In brief:

Mandatory HR documents must be kept for the periods set by law, with a clear separation between the active database and intermediate archives.
Going paperless requires technical guarantees such as integrity, authenticity and availability, in particular through a compliant electronic vault.
Document governance must define clear responsibilities and need-based access, while setting out a precise life cycle for each document.
It is advisable to automate the indexing of existing documents to create a dynamic knowledge base that makes onboarding, training and traceability easier.
To avoid loss or excessive retention, retention periods should be regularly reviewed and documented according to the CNIL framework.

A practical inventory: mandatory and recommended HR documents

Before discussing retention periods or tools, you need to know what you actually have to keep. Some documents are required by the Code du travail (the French Labor Code), while others are good practices that make life easier for HR teams without being legally mandatory.

The employment contract sets out the rights and obligations of each party and remains the reference document in the event of a dispute. Pay slips must be issued regularly and kept by both the employer and the employee. The registre unique du personnel centralizes the history of hires and staff movements, while the DUERP must exist for every employer, regardless of headcount, and be updated regularly.

In addition to these mandatory documents, there are social security certificates, the medical file when health monitoring is required, and the records of the career development reviews (entretiens professionnels) provided for by the Code du travail.

Here are the items to check first in a complete employee file:

Employment contract and any amendments.
Pay slips and supporting documents for social security contributions.
An up-to-date registre unique du personnel.
A DUERP updated according to the risks identified.
Records of career development reviews and training.

Other documents, not mandatory but useful, shape the employee experience: the job description clarifies responsibilities, the livret d'accueil (employee handbook) speeds up onboarding, the IT charter governs digital use, and the remote work policy sets clear rules for distributed teams. The HR manager usually remains the central point, even when the document itself is produced by a manager or the legal department.

Retention periods: CNIL benchmarks and practical rules

Illustration: an HR repository organized in folders, with retention periods and protected access.

An HR document is not kept indefinitely: the GDPR requires that personal data be held no longer than is strictly necessary for its purpose. The CNIL restates this principle and distinguishes between mandatory periods, set by law, and periods that are merely recommended for practical or evidentiary reasons.

The CNIL's dedicated human resources framework serves precisely as a tool for setting these time limits according to the nature of each document. It distinguishes the active database, where data is routinely consulted, from intermediate archiving, where data remains accessible but is accessed less often.

To build a solid retention policy, three habits help day to day:

Clearly separate the active database from intermediate archives based on actual frequency of use.
Document the rationale for each period, especially when it exceeds the legal minimum.
Review these periods regularly whenever the record of processing activities is updated.

This distinction between legal obligation and management choice avoids two opposite pitfalls: premature destruction of useful evidence, and excessive retention that exposes the company in the event of an inspection.

Going paperless and evidentiary value: what to check technically and contractually

Digitizing a document is not enough to make it legally enforceable. For an electronic pay slip or a paperless contract to retain its evidentiary value, three guarantees must be met: the file's integrity, its authenticity and its availability over time. The CNIL states that a compliant electronic vault is often necessary to achieve this level of assurance.

Before choosing a digitization provider, a few checks are essential:

Data hosted in the European Union.
Regular backups that are actually tested, not just promised.
Logging of access and changes to ensure traceability.
A documented disaster recovery policy in case of an incident.

Pro tip: before signing with a provider, ask for a demonstration of retrieving a document archived more than two years ago: it is the best test of real availability.

For an electronic pay slip to be legally enforceable, timestamping and the impossibility of any modification after issue are the points an inspection will check first. A simple PDF conversion, without timestamping or traceability, is not enough to guarantee this evidentiary value.

HR document governance: who does what and how to structure access

Reliable HR documentation rests on clear roles, not just good tools. The data controller makes the final decision on the purposes of collection, while a data protection officer, when the company appoints one, oversees overall compliance. Access rights should follow a genuine need-to-know logic: a manager does not need to consult the medical file of an employee on another team.

To structure this governance without unnecessary complexity, a few steps are enough:

Appoint a clear owner for each document category and maintain the record of processing activities.
Define a document life cycle: creation, approval, update, archiving or destruction.
Set simple indicators such as the completeness of employee files or the rate of correctly indexed documents.
Review these indicators at regular intervals, in connection with internal audits or external inspections.

On the technical side of access rights, a solution like Tawy Systems offers a dedicated approach to identity and access management, useful for companies that want to systematize this control beyond a simple Excel spreadsheet.

Moving from static documentation to an active knowledge base

A well-organized HR file often remains underused as long as it is a collection of isolated PDFs. Automatically indexing these documents turns them into a searchable base that can feed personalized onboarding journeys rather than a mere pile of files.

In practice, this approach serves several everyday HR uses:

Automatic generation of onboarding journeys from existing procedures.
Creation of validation quizzes to check that internal rules are properly understood.
An internal assistant that answers new hires' recurring questions.

At Weloom, this is exactly the dynamic repository we build from the documents HR teams have already produced, with no manual rewriting.

Pro tip: start indexing with the most frequently consulted documents, such as the employee handbook or the IT charter, before extending it to the entire document collection.

Author's perspective: HR priorities for documentation in 2026

In my view, the priority is not to pile up tools but to secure the high-risk documents first: the DUERP and payroll, where a failure costs the most in an inspection. Accessibility and traceability come next, and team training closes the loop. Better to index a little, but well, than to digitize everything without a method.

— Nicolas

A practical option: automating indexing and document-based onboarding

Once the legal obligations are covered, the question becomes operational: how to keep this documentation alive without tying up HR teams with repetitive answers. We designed a solution that automatically indexes the PDFs, procedures and charters you have already produced, and uses them to generate onboarding journeys, validation quizzes and an always-available assistant for new hires.

This approach directly addresses the issues covered above: time saved for HR teams, employee autonomy from day one, and traceability of knowledge thanks to hosting that meets European requirements, detailed on our security page.

Automatic indexing of existing internal documents, with no manual rewriting.
Onboarding journeys and quizzes generated from this already-approved content.
An internal assistant available 24/7 to reduce repetitive questions.
GDPR-compliant data hosting and processing.

Our Starter, Growth and Enterprise plans adapt to the size of the HR team and the number of new hires to onboard: details and pricing are available on our pricing page.

Frequently asked questions

Which mandatory HR documents must be kept?

Mandatory HR documents include the employment contract, pay slips, the registre unique du personnel and the document unique d'évaluation des risques professionnels. They also include the records of career development reviews and, depending on the position, the employee's medical file.

What are the four pillars of human resources?

The HR pillars generally cover recruitment, administration and payroll, training and skills development, and employee relations and dialogue with staff representatives. This breakdown varies depending on the organization but structures most HR departments.

What new HR obligations should be anticipated in 2026?

The CNIL framework on retention periods in human resources management was updated in 2026 and serves as a benchmark for adjusting internal data retention policies. HR teams must also continue to keep their DUERP up to date, an obligation reiterated by the French Ministry of Labor.

What topics does HR documentation cover day to day?

HR documentation covers the employment contract, payroll, occupational health and safety, training, and informing employees about how their personal data is processed. A platform like Weloom makes it possible to centralize these topics in a searchable base rather than in scattered files.

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