Employers: it is the law in Ontario that you are required to keep certain written records about each person that you hire. The employer must also ensure that the records are readily available for inspection.

What must you keep?

You must retain the employee’s name, address and starting date of employment for three years after the employee stopped working for you.

You must keep the employee’s date of birth if the employee is a student under 18. This must be kept for either three years after the employee’s 18th birthday or three years after the employee stopped working for the employer, whichever happens first. You must also keep a record of the hours worked by the employee each day and week. This must be kept for three years after the day or week of work.

If your employee receives a fixed salary for each pay period and the salary does not change (except with overtime) you are only required to record your employee’s hours in excess of those hours in the employee’s regular work week and the number of hours in excess of eight per day (or in excess of the hours in your employee’s regular work day, if it is more than eight hours).You are not required to record the hours of work for employees who are exempt from overtime pay and the provisions for maximum hours of work.

You must retain copies of every agreement made with an employee to work excess hours or to average overtime pay for three years after the last day on which work was performed under the agreement.
You are also required to keep records of the vacation time earned since the date of hire but not taken before the start of the vacation entitlement year, the vacation time earned, and vacation time taken (if any) during the vacation entitlement year (or stub period).

You must also keep records of the vacation pay paid to your employee during the vacation entitlement year (and stub period, if any) and how that vacation pay was calculated. These records must be made no later than seven days after the start of the next vacation entitlement year (or first vacation entitlement year if the records relate to a stub period) or the first payday after the stub period or vacation entitlement year ends, whichever is later.

Lastly you must also keep all employment documents relating to an employee’s pregnancy, parental, family medical, personal emergency, declared emergency, or reservist leave. These records must be kept for three years after the day the leave expired.

This is not legal advice. It is a summary reiteration of legislated law.