Growing up my mother would always tell me to keep copies of any paperwork exchanged between myself and my employer, in case a dispute of any sort should arise. Eventually, as I grew older, I understood that organizations such as the EEOC and the ACLU requested this documentation as well. However, in around 2010 I started to notice a difference in how companies disciplined employees and how they administered write ups and disciplinary notices. The company I worked for, which was a Fortune 500 corporation, suddenly changed tactics and they no longer gave paper documentation to employees of write ups or disciplinary notices employees had to sign. My company switched to a 'digital system' where each employee would sit down in front of a computer, beside a manager and go over aspects of their job performance that needed to be improved and they had to type their signatures in a computer database to show they had received this notice, however, we were never allowed to have copies. We also were not allowed to type statements explaining our point of view. The programs were designed to forbid this activity. I asked my manager for a copy of a notice I was given and was promptly told "We don't make copies of this". How odd. Eventually, my company changed the emails of all managers and even HR personnel and employees no longer had access to this information either. If we had a concern or a complaint on the job we had to go speak verbally to a manager. Yet there was never a record because we were no longer allowed to have the emails.
I eventually left that employer and went to work for another Fortune 500 company within the Dallas area. I quickly found out that at my new employer we could not print anything at all. The printers all had codes which only the managers were given and to print we had to go to a manager and have them print for us. We also were not allowed to send emails from our company accounts to our personal accounts (or vice versa) and we were not allowed access into the company accounts from home. So any commendation of any sort we were given we would have no record of it once we left the firm. So in case we were fired or snagged between an employment dispute we could not adequately prove our sides. I had this happen to me when I previously had to file for unemployment. The unemployment wanted records of my commendation emails (of which I had received several) and I could not provide them because my company had a no print policy and they didn't want anything at all in writing.
So all communications between an employee and his manager or his Human Resources office stays within the company and ultimately it will be a case of 'he said, she said' and from my experience companies LIE. Human Resources directors often fudge the truth or outright lie and managers do as well. They will often say anything to save their own hides and if they know you don't have the documentation they will claim ignorance or say it didn't happen.
This leaves the employees in a difficult situation and shows a deep lack of trust between the company, its managers and its lower level employees.
