Maintaining comprehensive and up-to-date employee records is not only good business practice, but can also be vital should a dispute end up in court.

In the past year, most organisations in Dubai have seen a significant amount of restructuring. The economic climate has meant that many employers have reviewed their existing organisational structure and sought to reduce and, wherever possible, limit their outgoings. As a result, some employees may have modified employment contracts (where the hours of work per week are reduced and so is the remuneration). Other employers have made redundancies and looked at phasing out certain positions.

The endeavour of every human resource professional is to try to ensure that the terms and conditions in employment contracts are consistent and uniform in respect of all the employees in an organisation, at least for employees of each grade. However, as the UAE is a melting pot of expatriate employees from various jurisdictions, this may result in multiple contracts with different terms. More often than not there are exceptions to the norms adopted, and once the cast is broken, things start to spin out of control.

Record collection
The onus of maintaining accurate and updated employee records lies with the employer. The management of employee records is vital to the effective functioning of any organisation. More so at a time when changes are being sought to be made to the terms or redundancies are being considered.

In the UAE, the current market practice when a candidate is being recruited is to agree to the extensive terms of their employment in an offer letter. If the employment is onshore, then a standard form Ministry of Labour employment contract is to be filed with the Ministry of Labour at the time a labour card is issued.

If the employment is in a free zone, then the free zone may have a similar standard form employment contract which may need to be completed. In the event that an employee has multiple contracts with differing and inconsistent terms, the view that the courts in the UAE have generally taken is to give credence to the contract that benefits the employee’s position.

Federal Law No 8 of 1980 (the “Labour Law”) sets out the basis for the terms and conditions of employment for employees working in the UAE (excluding those working in the Dubai International Financial Centre (“DIFC”), including, for example, the working conditions for employees, the hours of work, leave, end of service benefits and termination of employment.

The Labour Law stipulates that if an employer employs more than five people, they are required to keep a file for each employee, showing their name, job, occupation, age, nationality, place of residence, marital status, date of employment, salary and benefits, and any adjustments to these, penalties imposed against the employee, including details of any disciplinary action, occupational injuries and diseases. If the employee’s services are terminated, the file must retain a record of the reasons for termination.

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