Draft Amendment to the Labor Code in Poland

From 1 January 2019, new regulations covering employee documentation will come into force. The Amendment to the Labor Code is being introduced in response to the continuous digitization of the economy. The draft regulations were prepared by the Ministry of Enterprise and Technology, the Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Policy and the Social Insurance Office.

Number of vacation days

From the employees perspective, one of the most important changes that is being proposed concerns the number of vacation days that employees are entitled to during the year. The Amendment provides for 26 days vacation leave in Poland, regardless of seniority. The draft Amendment also originally provided that employees would no longer be able to "accumulate" any unused vacation days from a given year in order to use them in future years and take whole months off work.

Storage of employee documentation

Although it is not known which of the provisions from the proposed amendments to the Labor Code in Poland will be in fact introduced, it is known that they will be introduced through the Act of 10 January 2018, on the amendment of certain Acts in connection with the shortening of the required period of storage of employee files and their digitalization.

Following from the above, the period for which employee documentation is required to be stored will now be 10 years, instead of 50 years as it has been to date. The previous rule was a good solution for people who, for example, lost their work certificate – as they could ask their previous employer for a copy of their work certificate, even after several or several dozen years following the termination of employment. From 1 January 2019, employees will have to remember that their documentation will be stored for only 10 years and then destroyed. Employers will also be required to inform their employees about how long they will store their documentation. Twelve months after the agreed date of the hand over of the documents, the employer will be able to destroy them.

Employers will also be required to keep documents related to the recordings of working time and utilized vacation days for a period of 10 years (currently such documentation is required to be stored for the period of 3 years).

Employee documents in electronic form

The way in which employee documentation is stored will also change. Due to technological progress, from 2019 it will be possible to digitize employee documents.

For businesses, this means a possible reduction in the cost of storing employee documentation and, additionally, it will have a direct impact on their technological development. According to the calculations of the Ministry of Enterprise and Technology, it can be concluded that for enterprises employing about five hundred employees the introduction of electronic employee documentation should save them up to PLN 200,000. Potentially, the entire process will also shorten the time that is needed to find and verify information. However, the most important thing is that the employer ensures that the documentation is stored safely and securely.