Leaving a company does not mean losing the HR documents accumulated over the years on MyPeopleDoc. The digital vault remains accessible after departure, provided that a few technical steps are followed within a specific timeframe. The transition between two employers is the moment when the risk of losing access to pay slips and contracts is the highest.
Personal email address on MyPeopleDoc: the lockout to anticipate before departure
Most employees activate their MyPeopleDoc vault with their work email address, the one provided by the company. At the time of departure, this address is disabled by the IT department, sometimes within hours of the end of the contract.
If the MyPeopleDoc account remains solely associated with this work email address, the password recovery procedure becomes impossible. The employee finds themselves with an existing vault containing their documents, but without a way to connect to it.
The action to take is simple but often overlooked: provide a personal email address before the effective departure date. This update can be done from the account settings, in the section dedicated to contact information. Some operational guides recommend doing this as soon as the termination or resignation letter is signed, without waiting for the last day.
Maintaining access to your My People Docs relies on this technical point, which conditions everything that follows.
Continuity of the digital vault after a change of employer
The MyPeopleDoc vault is linked to the individual, not the company. This principle, rooted in regulations regarding the dematerialization of pay slips, ensures that documents remain accessible even if the company changes service providers or disappears.
When an employee joins a new employer that also uses MyPeopleDoc, both spaces can coexist. The account linking feature allows documents from multiple successive employers to be grouped under a single access. The employee retains a centralized history without having to juggle multiple identifiers.
However, if the new employer does not use MyPeopleDoc, the old vault remains accessible independently. No action from the new employer is required to maintain this access. The employee logs in with their personal credentials, regardless of any contractual relationship with a company.
Retention period guaranteed by regulations
The regulatory framework imposes a retention period for dematerialized pay slips of at least 50 years or until the employee turns 75. This obligation falls on the vault provider, not the employer.
The asymmetry is notable: an employer is only required to keep their own copies for a few years. For an employee who moves through multiple positions over a long career, the digital vault becomes a much more durable professional history than the archives of each of the companies they have worked for.
Downloading and local backup of MyPeopleDoc documents
Relying solely on an online service to store documents for several decades carries a structural risk. Providers can be acquired, merged, or change their service conditions. MyPeopleDoc is currently part of the UKG HR Service Delivery ecosystem, which reflects ongoing changes.
Regularly downloading documents to personal storage remains the most reliable precaution. The platform allows for the retrieval of each file individually or in bulk. Here are the items to prioritize for backup:
- Pay slips from each employer, necessary for mortgage, rental, or retirement calculation files
- Employment contracts and amendments, which establish hiring conditions and job changes
- Employer certificates and work certificates, needed when registering with France Travail or to justify professional experience
- Training and certification documents, useful for retraining or validating acquired skills
Storing these files on two separate media (external hard drive and personal cloud service) limits the risk of total loss.
Special cases that complicate the portability of HR documents
The theory is clear: the vault follows the employee. Practice reveals some situations where continuity becomes complicated.
When an employer stops using MyPeopleDoc midway (for example, changing payroll providers), the documents already deposited remain in the employee’s vault. The new pay slips will transit through another channel. The employee then finds themselves with a fragmented history across multiple platforms.
The case of the complete disappearance of the company (judicial liquidation) raises a different question. Regulations require the digital vault provider to ensure the return or portability of documents, regardless of the employer’s fate. The available data does not allow for a conclusion about the actual fluidity of this process in all scenarios, but the legal framework protects the employee in principle.
Multiple accounts and duplicated addresses
An employee who created their MyPeopleDoc account with one email address at a first employer, then receives a new invitation at a second employer with the same address, may face an account conflict. Account linking resolves this issue, but it requires a manual action from the interface.
Failing to perform this linking means maintaining two separate vaults, with two distinct logins. Centralizing documents under a unique identifier simplifies long-term management, especially for a career path involving multiple employers.
The portability of digital HR documents depends less on technology than on the employee’s reflexes at the time of departure. Updating their email address, downloading their files, linking their accounts: three actions that take a few minutes and secure years of professional history.
