Data Retention & Deletion Policy
Defines how long customer payroll, tax filings, employee audit logs, and attendance records are maintained, and our cryptographic deletion procedure.
LEGAL NOTICE & CUSTOMIZATION ADVISORY
This policy contains baseline provisions tailored for a B2B Human Resource Management System (HRMS) handling payroll, biometric attendance, tax, and employee records under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDPA) and global privacy frameworks (including GDPR). Bracketed values such as [COMPANY_NAME], [PRIVACY_EMAIL], and statutory grievance officer details must be verified by qualified legal counsel prior to commercial execution.
As an enterprise HRMS platform handling sensitive compensation records, employee contracts, and attendance telemetry, omniHR adheres to the core privacy principle of Storage Limitation: personal data shall not be kept longer than necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, or as mandated by applicable labor, taxation, and company regulations.
Unless a customer specifically requests custom retention rules or litigation holds apply, our platform enforces the following baseline retention matrix:
| Data Category | Standard Retention Period | Statutory Justification / Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Payroll, Salary Slips & Bank Details | 8 Financial Years post-disbursement | Section 128 Companies Act, 2013 & Income Tax Act, 1961 audit requirements. |
| Statutory Tax, TDS & PF/ESIC Records | 8 Years post assessment year | Tax audit reconciliation, EPFO and ESIC regulatory compliance audits. |
| Attendance, Clock-In & Overtime Logs | 3 Years from creation | Factories Act, Shops & Establishments Act, and state wage regulation rules. |
| Leave Applications & Approvals | 3 Years following year-end closing | Annual leave balance settlement and gratuity computation verifications. |
| Employment Contracts & Exit Documents | Duration of employment + 3 Years post-exit | Statutory limitation period for contractual labor claims under civil law. |
| System Access & Immutable Audit Logs | 12 Months rolling | Cybersecurity incident investigation and forensic audit readiness. |
Where optional AI Face Recognition attendance is activated:
- Zero Raw Image Storage: The platform stores only irreversible mathematical vector hashes, never raw camera photos.
- Instant Post-Termination Deletion: Upon marked employee termination in the HRMS, all biometric vector records are permanently deleted within [24 hours].
Data deletion is initiated upon the occurrence of any of the following events:
- Contract Expiration: Upon SaaS subscription termination and expiry of the [30 to 60 days] export grace period.
- Employee Offboarding: Marking an employee profile as "Purged" by tenant HR administrator.
- Valid DSAR Erasure: A verified data principal erasure request under DPDPA Section 12 or GDPR Article 17, verified by the employer.
Data deletion is executed in accordance with NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 1 (Guidelines for Media Sanitization). For multi-tenant cloud storage, we execute Cryptographic Erasure ("Crypto-Shredding"): the unique encryption key securing the customer's isolated tenant segment is permanently destroyed, rendering all stored ciphertext mathematically impossible to decrypt.
Encrypted database snapshots and transaction write-ahead logs maintained for disaster recovery are retained for a maximum rolling window of [30 to 90 days]. Once purged from production databases, data is naturally aged out and overwritten across all backup volumes as old snapshots expire.
Customer tenant administrators possess built-in tools within the HRMS dashboard to generate full ZIP/CSV exports of employee master lists, payroll registers, and attendance sheets prior to initiating scheduled employee purges.