The GDPR sets no table of retention periods. The rule is that personal data may not be kept in a form permitting identification for longer than is necessary for the purposes for which they were processed, which means an employer has to decide, per category, how long it actually needs the data and be able to explain that decision.
In practice Dutch employers work with two anchors: a general period of about two years after the end of employment for most personnel data, and seven years for anything the tax authority requires, because that is the statutory retention period for fiscal records. Our article on what may be kept in a personnel file deals with the content; this one deals with how long.
The two-year category
Most of the file falls here: the employment contract and its amendments, correspondence about performance, appraisals, training records, warnings, records of absence dates, and the general administrative record of the employment. Two years after the employment ends is the period commonly applied, and it aligns with the periods within which employment claims are typically brought.
Where a dispute is running or foreseeable, data relevant to it may be kept until it is resolved. That is a legitimate necessity, but it justifies keeping the relevant material, not the whole file indefinitely.
The seven-year category
Payroll administration, the wage tax statement and the copy of the identity document verified at the start of employment are kept for seven years after the end of the year in which the employment ended, because tax legislation requires it. Here the employer has no discretion: the fiscal obligation sets the period, and it overrides the general principle of minimisation for those specific records.
Applicants
Data of candidates who are not appointed are normally destroyed within four weeks of the end of the procedure. With the candidate’s consent they can be kept for up to a year, which is what a talent pool amounts to – and consent means a real choice, recorded, not a line in a privacy statement.
Sickness and medical data
Data about an employee’s health are held by the company doctor, not by the employer, and are subject to medical confidentiality with their own retention rules. What the employer keeps is limited to absence dates and the information needed for reintegration and wage payment, and those follow the ordinary personnel retention periods.
Making it work in practice
Three things turn this from theory into compliance. A retention schedule setting the period per category, recorded in the processing register. A fixed annual moment at which the schedule is actually applied, because retention policies fail through inaction rather than through disagreement. And deletion that is real: removing a file from the personnel system while copies remain in mailboxes, shared drives and backups is not deletion, and it is the first thing an access request exposes.
Frequently asked questions
Can an employee demand that data be deleted?
Sometimes. The right to erasure applies where the data are no longer necessary or were unlawfully processed, but it does not override a statutory retention obligation such as the fiscal one.
May we keep a file longer in case of a future claim?
Where a claim is realistically foreseeable, yes, for the material relevant to it. A general possibility of some future dispute does not justify keeping everything.
What about references and exit documents?
They fall within the general personnel category. Keeping the settlement agreement for the fiscal period is defensible where it has payroll consequences.
Advice
We draft retention schedules, review personnel administration against the GDPR, and advise where an erasure or access request arrives. Please contact Law & More.
