Swiss legal retention periods for personnel records, employee files, and HR documents

Last update: 17 May 2025

"The employer's interest in retaining employee files - usually for evidentiary purposes or to fulfil a legal obligation such as issuing a work certificate - must be balanced against the legal obligation to retain employee data only to the extent necessary and to treat it with the utmost care"

Definition and typology

Swiss personnel files or human resources records are a compilation of all records relating to an employee from the time they join the organization until they leave, and usually include the following entries:

Contact details and address
Application documents: ID, resume, references, professional trainings, certificates, diplomas, etc.
Results of tests taken as part of the recruitment process
Employment contract and its annexes
Bank details and insurance information
Pay slips and salary statements
Information on working hours, sick leave (medical certificates), absences, and vacation
Ongoing training and career planning
Performance reviews
Information on disciplinary measures: warnings, file notes on incidents, sanctions
Correspondence between employer and employee
Registry extracts: criminal record extract, extract from the debt collection register, etc.

Regular review of the Swiss personnel file

Personal data in Switzerland may only be processed in accordance with the principle of proportionality and good faith (Art. 6 para. 2 FADP). Swiss human resources departments may therefore only add records to the personnel file if they (i) "concern the employee’s suitability for his job" or (ii) "are necessary for the performance of the employment contract" (Art. 328b CO).

For this reason, Swiss human resources records must be regularly reviewed and cleaned up (pruned) to ensure that they are (i) accurate (ii) up to date and (iii) necessary. Inaccurate or incomplete personal data must be corrected, and documents that are "no longer required for the purpose of processing" must be "destroyed or anonymized" (Art. 6 para. 4 and 5 FADP).

Right of information to the Swiss personnel file

Under Swiss data protection law, all employees in Switzerland have the right to inspect the contents of their personnel files, and a corresponding request for information must generally be answered free of charge within 30 days (Art. 25 FADP).

The right to know what is contained in one's employee file includes the right to gain clarity on:

the processed personal data
the purpose of processing
the retention period for the personal data or, if this is not possible, the criteria for determining this period
the available information about the source of the personal data, if it has not been collected from the employee directly
if applicable, whether an automated individual decision has been taken and the logic behind the decision
if applicable, the recipients or the categories of recipients to which such personal data is disclosed, including if applicable any foreign states or international bodies

Swiss retention periods for human resources records

The employer's interest in retaining employee files (usually for evidentiary purposes or to fulfil a legal obligation such as issuing a work certificate) must be balanced against the legal obligation to retain employee data only to the extent necessary and to treat it with the utmost care.

For this reason, Swiss HR files must generally be destroyed once the employment relationship has ended. And although Swiss law does not specify any explicit recordkeeping periods for personnel files, the following retention periods can be observed in Swiss human resources practice:

HR records of rejected candidates: destroy immediately after completion of the recruitment process
HR records related to salary claims: retain for 5 years from the claim becoming due (Art. 128a in conjunction with Art. 130 para. 1 CO)
HR records related to the work certificate: retain for 10 years from the date of departure (Art. 330a CO)
HR records related to accounting: retain for 10 years from the end of the financial year in which the last entry was made

The term salary claim must be interpreted very broadly and includes all claims relating to the work performed. This includes gratuities and similar payments such as bonuses or profit sharing, compensation for overtime, night work, work on Sundays (basic wage and supplements), holiday pay, holiday entitlement, and wages in the event of absence from work for reasons beyond the employee's control (continued payment of salary under Art. 324a CO).

The indefinite storage of employee data is not permitted in Switzerland.

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