Statutory Records · Employee Roster and Wage Ledger
Statutory HR Records
What are statutory HR records?
- Employee rosters, wage ledgers, and similar records must be created and retained by law
- Scattered records are hard to find when you need them
- Keeping records past their retention period is also a risk
What changes when you meet this obligation is not the thickness of your files but who has to explain when a dispute arises. When a complaint is filed over working hours or allowances, the labor inspector asks the company for records first. With records, the company can answer with numbers. Without them, it must accept a situation where the employee's memory and statements effectively become the standard. Records show the company acted in good faith, and they settle misunderstandings in minutes.
The records to retain fall into three broad groups. The employee roster records name, date of birth, work history, duties, and hire and separation dates, while the wage ledger must also record days worked, hours worked, and overtime, night, and holiday hours. Employment contracts, documents on promotions and pay cuts, and leave-related documents are covered as well. The retention period is three years, but the starting point differs by document, and for the employee roster and employment contracts it is counted from the date of separation. Electronic storage is allowed, but you must be able to print and submit the records immediately on request.
The wage ledger and the wage statement are easy to confuse. A statement is a document given to the employee each time wages are paid, while the ledger is a record the company keeps, so they are separate obligations. Emailing statements does not mean you have a ledger. Documents created for management purposes, such as personnel record cards or evaluation files, also need to be distinguished from statutory records, and what matters is not the look of the form but whether any required entries are missing. Workplaces with four or fewer regular employees and short-term day laborers are subject to eased requirements in some respects, so check the scope of application separately.
The most common misconception is that everything is already in the payroll system. Systems often keep only the calculated payment amounts, without overtime hours or the calculation basis, so they fail as evidence in unpaid-wage disputes. Migrating to a new system without moving old data can also wipe out two to three years of records at once. Conversely, keeping résumés and family-relationship documents for ten years after an employee leaves is not retention but excessive holding of personal data, which creates a different risk. The retention list and the disposal procedure must work as a set. Targets and periods may be amended, so check the latest laws and Ministry of Employment and Labor guidance every year.
Kyungtae KimHR expert · Organizational culture and HR strategy consultant
Hwi KimCEO of HRDIST & talent development systems consultantThe Labor Standards Act requires employers to create and retain an employee roster and wage ledger, and sets retention periods for important documents relating to employment contracts (Articles 41, 48, 42, and others).
Company A, a packaging manufacturer, has 68 employees and annual revenue of around KRW 19 billion (≈ US$14,215,200). A former production employee filed a complaint saying they had been 'underpaid for overtime two and a half years ago.' In the meantime, the company had changed its payroll system, and attendance and payroll data from before 2022 had not been migrated. The signed copies of employment contracts were also split between a cabinet at the plant and a folder at headquarters. (Hypothetical example)
- When the administration director and the retained labor attorney checked 12 types of statutory records, only 5 had a complete three years on file. The attorney put it bluntly: 'If there is no scan of the signed copy, it doesn’t exist.'
- When Assistant Manager Kim in payroll opened the wage ledger template, it had no column for overtime, night, and holiday hours. The team added the fields to the ERP and regenerated the ledgers starting from 2023.
- The HR team lead re-sorted former employees' files by departure date, split them into a three-year retention folder and a pending-disposal folder, and had the date and method recorded in a disposal register.
- After finding that 19 accounts had access to the HR folder, the information security manager cut it to four HR and payroll accounts and set up download logging.
- Six months later, during a labor inspection, the company submitted the nine requested documents within two hours (the previous inspection took two days). The complaint was also closed with no additional payment, because the wage ledger confirmed the overtime payments.