How long to keep employee files in Poland: ten years or fifty — and why one date decides it

Why a single number in the register is always false

The reform of 10 January 2018 cut the retention of employee documentation from fifty years to ten, but not for everyone at once. Three groups of workers emerged, each with its own period and its own starting point. In practice “10 years” in the retention column is true for one group, false for the second and conditional for the third.

For anyone hired from 1 January 2019 the base rule in Art. 94(9b) of the Labour Code applies: the documentation is kept for the duration of the employment plus ten years from the end of the calendar year in which it ended. The period runs from the end of the year, not from the day of termination: for a contract ending in January that is nearly eleven years.

For anyone hired before 1 January 1999 the period is fifty years, counted from the DAY employment ended. Not only the number changes but the method of counting: in the fifty-year regime there is no rounding to year-end. This group cannot be shortened — the report does not reach it.

The middle group: a reduction that has to be earned

For anyone hired between 1 January 1999 and 31 December 2018 the default is fifty years. The cut to ten happens only if the employer first files the ZUS OSW declaration and then the ZUS RIA information report. And here is the trap that overturns most registers: after filing, the period runs from the end of the calendar year in which THE REPORT WAS FILED — not from the end of the employment.

For an employee who left in 2005 and whose report was filed in 2021, the period expires at the end of 2031. The filing date therefore becomes a data item without which the deletion moment cannot be calculated at all, and it must be kept alongside the file — which is itself processing that belongs in the record.

• Not filing the report is not a neutral omission: it decides forty additional years of retaining personal data. Under storage limitation that requires a reasoned decision, not silence.
• Since 2019 working-time records form part of the employee documentation and follow its period. They previously had their own shorter period, and the residue of that rule is still in many registers.
• Payroll lists and wage cards have a five-year floor in the accounting act, but their real period is set by pension rules — the same ten-or-fifty split. Writing “5 years” in the register looks right and is wrong.
• Part D of the file has its own, shorter fate: the copy of a disciplinary penalty notice is removed after a year of blameless work, by operation of law. In one merged PDF that removal is unworkable.

The practical conclusion for the record of processing activities: the retention column for employee documentation cannot hold a number. It must hold a rule — the hiring date as the criterion, the ZUS report status as the condition, and the proceedings check as the suspension trigger. A register that says “10 years” describes a third of the reality and looks complete while doing so, which is worse than a gap.