Employee records: documents filed, deadlines met

Four flags this morning on your personnel files.
· Forty-one contract amendments carry no employee signature. Eleven concern a change of pay.
· Thirty-four medical documents sit in ordinary personnel files, reachable by seven people. I restricted them this morning; I opened none of them.
· Nine disciplinary items exceed the retention period set by your note of 03/03/2025, the oldest by six years.
· Two hundred and twelve documents are filed as "miscellaneous". I could not say what they were, and I did not guess. morning-watch_4-flags.pdf34 documents restricted · 0 opened
⛓ Source · 214 personnel files, procedure note of 03/03/2025, access rights

By what is written on them and around them, never by what they contain.
What I read: the file name, the issuer where it appears in the letterhead, the form type, and the folder it sits in. A fitness certificate carries a heading, a sick note has a known layout, a doctor's letter has a letterhead.
What stays closed, and it is what makes the filing usable: the body of the document. A reason for absence, a fitness restriction, a diagnosis enter no index — the 34 items are filed, named and dated without a single health datum changing hands.
What I did this morning, on my own: I brought their access from seven people down to those your note designates. It is the only action I take without asking, and it always goes the same way: less access.
What goes out prepared and waits for your click: opening an access, moving a document out of the file, deleting it. The request arrives written — who, which file, what reason, until when — and it is approved in one click: the 12 requests this month were each settled in under two hours. Restricting wrongly is repaired in a minute; opening wrongly is not — the document has been seen, and that is the only reason that particular click is yours.
What I supply: the list of 34, by type and by file, without one line of their content. 34-documents_restricted-unopened.pdf7 accesses → those the note designates
⛓ Source · headings and letterheads, note of 03/03/2025, access log

I watch, continuously, what you have opened to me: personnel files, access rights, your procedure note, and the dates the documents carry.
Routing follows what can be repaired: an unsigned amendment goes to HR, and nobody else — it is a contractual matter; a misfiled medical document to HR, with the restriction already in place; a disciplinary item beyond its period to the same person, never to the employee's manager; a document I could not classify to whoever files, marked "undetermined".
With a chase: 48 h on over-wide access, 7 days on the rest. Then a monthly summary: by document type and by gap, never by employee.

What is already secured this morning: 34 medical documents have gone from seven readers to those your note designates, without one of them being opened; 41 unsigned amendments are out of the shadows, 11 of them on pay; 9 disciplinary items beyond their retention period are dated and listed. Across 214 files, that is a completeness check that no longer happens file by file, but continuously.
Sovereignty here is a setting, not a promise: access is opened by role, logged, withdrawn on a word, and nothing leaves the company — local inference or an isolated resource hosted in France. The only move I make on my own always goes the same way: less access, and it is undone in a minute.
What follows is yours, and it is ready: chasing the 41 signatures, refiling the 212 "miscellaneous", purging the 9 items beyond their retention period — that last one cannot be undone, so it waits for a mandate that names the 9 items, one by one. On a written, capped, dated mandate, revocable on a word, the rest is carried out within minutes, with the log to show for it, and your HR team reads one statement instead of reopening 214 files.
✎ Framework · restrict alone, never open alone, never delete

Yes, and never "against good practice": against your rules, the ones in your procedure note of 09/01, article by article.
Across 212 personnel files, your note requires nine documents per employee — fourteen for posts requiring an authorisation. There are 147 missing documents, and they are very unevenly spread:
· 61 medical examination certificates absent from the file, 38 of them for employees you told me had attended: this is the document that exists and never reaches the file;
· 34 proofs of qualification required by article 4 of your note;
· 28 mandatory training certificates for posts that require them;
· 19 bank details predating the last declared change;
· 5 signed copies of the staff handbook.
Every flag carries the rule that grounds it, quoted — "procedure note of 09/01, article 4, paragraph 2" — and the person who holds the document. A gap with no rule quoted gets argued about for six months; a gap with its rule is closed in a week.
What is not counted as missing: 23 documents are present but illegible or unsigned. They are counted separately — asking again for a document is not the same errand as getting the one you already have signed.
✎ Framework · missing documents against your written procedure, rule quoted

Renewal dates are tracked across the three families your note names: medical examinations, authorisations, mandatory training.
What falls due over the next six months, in date order:
· 14 electrical authorisations expire, 3 of them within 30 days. Those block an assignment the day they lapse — the one case where a renewal cannot be caught up afterwards;
· 29 periodic medical examinations, 6 of them already more than two months overdue;
· 17 mandatory training courses to retake, 9 of which concern the same team and can be grouped into one session — 4 training days saved if you group them, and the grouping calendar is already proposed.
Reminders go out at 90, 45 and 15 days, to the HR manager and the line manager, never to the employee directly — that is your rule, not mine. Each reminder carries the expiry date, the source document and the cycle that sets it.
What the tracking caught over twelve months: no authorisation expired without a renewal under way, against 7 the previous year, and two assignments postponed rather than cancelled.
A figure that does not suit me: 11 due dates were calculated from the wrong date, all medical examinations whose file carried the appointment date rather than the certificate date. The certificate date now overrides any other date in the file, and all 11 were recalculated — 3 were in fact overdue and went out as reminders the same day. And nothing is deleted in the process: an expired document stays on file, it only changes state.
⛓ Sourced · dates on the file documents, renewal cycles from your note