How a personnel number is assigned to an employee. Is it needed at all?

A personnel number is a detail that is used in personnel records. With the help of a personnel number, an individual person is displayed in the company’s internal papers, and not just a staff member.

When an employer uses unified forms approved by the State Statistics Committee for internal personnel records and working time recording, the personnel number is one of the required details. Without it, it will be impossible to fill out the forms correctly. In this article we will look at how to assign a personnel number to an employee.

What is a personnel number

As is already clear from the name itself, in fact, a personnel number is a special digital code for an employee. It is assigned to a person from the moment he begins to perform his job duties. Personnel numbers are not repeated and such a code is strictly individual for each employee. Throughout the entire period of a person’s work in a particular company, his personnel number remains unchanged.

Even if an employee at some point left the organization, but then decided to return to it, he will be assigned the same personnel number.

It must be said that timekeeping is rarely used in small companies, but, as a rule, it is mandatory in medium and large enterprises.

If the company is reorganized, is it necessary to assign new personnel numbers to employees ?

Order on appointing someone responsible for maintaining time sheets

He centrally maintains time sheets for all employees. But the law does not prohibit another option. With it, each department solves this nuance independently, dividing the responsibility for compiling and maintaining timesheets among its personnel. The order provides for taking into account the requirements listed in Resolution of the State Statistics Committee No. 402 dated December 4, 2012.

It is precisely this that prescribes in detail what points should be present in the time sheets of commercial enterprises.

For budgetary organizations there is a special form numbered 0504421. The Labor Code could not be avoided. Art. 91 provides for the publication of this paper. The document is filled out on behalf of the manager and consists of a header, main and final parts. The organization, its contacts, place of publication and date are listed at the top.

The main data is contained in the middle part.

It first states the reasons for issuing this order. Possible causes:

Why are personnel numbers needed?

Assigning special digital combinations to employees of an enterprise serves several purposes:

facilitating the work of accounting department specialists in processing and recording data on internal movements of employees;
the personnel number is used to enter various marks for a particular employee, which make it possible in the future to more simply and correctly calculate parameters such as wages and related taxes;
These figures make it possible to easily find all the information about salaries, sick leave, time off, overtime, vacations, etc. for this or that employee.

But, nevertheless, the main purpose of the personnel number is to record the time spent by the employee directly at the workplace. To do this, authorized employees of the enterprise record the time of arrival of personnel from work and departure home, all kinds of absences for lunch, for personal matters, etc. In the future, this information makes it possible to determine whether the person worked the allotted time or whether he had overtime, and, based on this, calculate his wages.

If we talk about the time that an employee should spend at the workplace, then there are three main options.

Full time (40 hours per week).
Shortened working hours (20 hours per week or less).
Part-time work (the number of hours is determined individually by a separate agreement between the employer and employee).

Most often, the last two points apply to students, minors, pensioners, people with disabilities and some other categories of citizens.

Question: An employer has two positions for a procurement specialist, but hires one employee for two positions. Moreover, it registers one employee under two employment contracts. In the first employment contract he indicates “Purchasing Specialist of the 1st category”, in the second - “Purchasing Specialist of the 2nd category”. Issues two orders under two employment contracts. Now questions arise with the personnel number: 1. Should I assign one personnel number or two different personnel numbers? 2. Does the employer have the right to assign two different personnel numbers to one employee for different positions (under two employment contracts)? 3. If an employer assigns two personnel numbers to one employee, can the employer issue two pay slips for each personnel number? Or should there be one payslip? 4. If the employer also offers an internal combination to the employee, then does the employer need to assign the employee a third personnel number? View answer

Who assigns a personnel number to an employee

Each organization that maintains such personnel records must have a specialist assigned this responsibility. As a rule, this is either the head of a department or an employee of the personnel department, who subsequently transmits the data to the accounting department, either directly as an accountant, or as a special timekeeper. The latter is especially common in large industrial enterprises. An authorized employee maintains a register and records of assigned ciphers, monitoring the correctness of their assignment and use.

Do I need to create a new personnel number for an internal part-time worker?

Who can appropriate?

Personnel numbers are assigned to employees by a HR specialist. However, it is worth noting that the legislation does not regulate the position of the employee involved in assigning ciphers. However, when applying for a job, it is the HR engineers who are directly present.

This can also be done by the heads of structural divisions or even by the head of the enterprise. In the absence of a personnel employee, an accountant may take his place in this matter.

Can all employees be assigned a code? Personnel numbers are usually kept for all employees of an enterprise. Namely:

For employees working on a permanent basis.
Temporary or seasonal workers.
External part-time workers.
For those who work part-time.

In fact, each employee has his own personnel number, regardless of how long he is employed. It is noteworthy that even students who apply for internships in any department receive their own code.

It is worth noting that if an employee has any combination of jobs or professions within one enterprise, he still receives one personnel number. An employee who works part-time in two companies has his own individual code in each of them.

July 9, 2017

Not every employee comes across such a concept as “employee personnel number”. Often those who work in a large or medium-sized enterprise know about this. The accounting department of a small-scale LLC usually does not notify employees. Large factories always tell employees their personnel numbers.

This parameter must also be indicated in the employment order. It can be typed in the program or handwritten by a HR representative.

Indeed, entering an additional personnel number in such a situation is not prohibited. However, there is another solution to the problem (for more information, see “Personnel number of an internal part-time worker”).

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There are no specially developed regulations for the correct assignment of individual digital ciphers. Based on this, each organization has the right to create its own rules for the development of ciphers and subsequently adjust them.

You should also take into account the basic rules for accounting for labor and wages, which are used in the construction and industrial fields: each employee who is hired for a permanent, temporary, or seasonal stay in the workplace is assigned an individual timesheet code consisting of several digits.

To correctly assign and maintain timesheet records, you need to:

Each organization that practices the establishment of personnel numbers when hiring is required to have on its staff a worker who will maintain full control over the assignment, accounting, created register and maintenance of all the basic rules for issuing an individual document.
Employees applying for a job for the first time are required to assign individual digital combinations when the entire package of documents is submitted. As a last resort, assignment can be made on the first working day.
Assignment occurs in chronological order.
The employee’s individual number must appear in the order that confirms employment.
It is impossible to change the number for any reason, since it is assigned once.
In the case of a re-employment, the worker can receive his old personnel number, which is located in the database under his initials. But unless, of course, it was given to another employee within 1-2 years.
Mandatory condition: the employee number must be in the form of Arabic numerals, cannot consist of letters, or contain dashes or other separating characters.

Considering that the procedure and necessity for assigning unique account numbers is left to the discretion of the employer by law, the principles for identifying employees must be established by order on the internal document flow of the enterprise. The Rules regulating the procedure for assigning a personnel number to an employee at a particular enterprise must reflect the following aspects:

availability and maintenance of a register of personnel numbers at the enterprise;
how a personnel number is assigned to employees of the organization who are employed for the first time and repeatedly;
requirements for the chronologization of personnel numbers (starting with No. 1 and sequentially increasing numbering);
Contents of the TN Registration Journal.

Who is assigned personnel codes?

Personnel numbers must be assigned to all employees of the enterprise where personnel records are maintained. In particular:

those who are employed on a permanent basis;
temporary employees;
external part-time workers;
seasonal workers.

Attention! If an employee combines positions within one structural unit or department, there is no need to create a separate personnel number for him. However, if his second job is outside this organization or in another department, then assigning a personnel number is quite appropriate.

Question: Is it necessary to assign a new personnel number to an internal part-time worker? Can an organization be fined for the same personnel number of an employee for his main job and for an internal part-time job? View answer

How to keep records? Practical recommendations

It is generally accepted that a personnel number is assigned to each employee, and one should start with the first number. In fact, it becomes identical to the concept of “ordinal number”.

Such accounting can be carried out in two ways:

Using special programs.
Manually by an employee.

The latter method is used less and less. This is due to the fact that the most popular 1C program allows you to automatically assign numbers to each newly hired employee of the enterprise.

How is a personnel number assigned?

According to generally accepted rules of personnel and accounting, personnel numbers should be assigned from a single value. As the number of employees increases, this figure correspondingly grows in chronological order, without omissions. To encrypt the personnel number, only Arabic numerals are used, without adding any other symbols, such as periods, quotation marks, hyphens, etc.

However, the above information is not strictly mandatory. The fact is that the law does not have any special clauses or any regulations regulating the assignment of personnel numbers. So, purely theoretically, each enterprise has the right to independently decide how to develop and apply these digital codes to employees, as well as adjust them in the future.

Since personnel records allow you to keep order in internal documentation, when assigning personnel numbers it is advisable to adhere to the following recommendations:

A strictly defined employee must be involved in timekeeping;
A personnel number must be assigned immediately after the newly hired employee submits all the necessary documents for registration or on his first working day;
When assigning personnel digital combinations, you must follow the chronology, excluding omissions;
It is necessary to bring to the attention of the employee the digital code assigned to him;
It is mandatory to include the individual number in the employment order.

Biometric accounting systems

First, about what an employee’s personnel number is. Personnel codes are written in the personal cards of employees after their admission to the enterprise has been formalized. These codes remain valid throughout the entire period of validity of the employment agreement with the individual.

When an employee is dismissed, the released number will not be used for other persons. This code is retained by the person in case he is re-employed by the company.

Also see “Sample bypass sheet upon dismissal.”

In personnel records, the personnel number is used for the following purposes:

employee identification in primary personnel documentation;
indication of numbers in accounting forms when calculating salaries;
operational analysis of employees based on samples based on timesheet codes.

From here it becomes clear whether personnel numbers are needed. It's really very convenient.

However, is a personnel number required? Formally, no, since there is virtually no legislative regulation of the procedure for assigning personnel codes.

Today, how personnel numbers are assigned to employees of an organization can be found out from the acts of the USSR period. Thus, employers who decide to introduce this system for identifying members of the workforce into personnel records are guided by the provisions of April 27, 1973 - this is a joint letter of the State Labor Committee No. 75-AB, the Ministry of Finance No. 89 and the Central Stat. control No. 10-80.

Paragraph 18 of this letter states how personnel numbers are assigned. Every employee who is employed should have this code:

temporarily;
on an ongoing basis;
for one season.

The individual code designation is retained by the previous employee for one to two years.

Details - how to assign a personnel number, their release and accounting - are developed by business entities independently and approved by internal regulations.

The standard timesheet code consists only of numeric characters, but the employer has the right to enter alphabetic characters into it.

The operation of the personnel numbering system is based on the following principles:

One specialist is responsible for assigning and recording numbers.
The employee is assigned a personnel code on the day the full set of documents for employment is provided.
If there are time codes, they are prescribed in the administrative documentation concerning the employee.
Numbering is carried out in chronological order, numerical designations begin with one.
The first number is allocated to the head of the company.
Changing assigned numbers is not allowed (even if a specialist is transferred to another department).

To record personnel numbering, a separate journal is created at the enterprise. It records:

information identifying the employee;
details of the employment agreement;
personnel code.

Thus, each company decides for itself how it will assign personnel numbers and whether it will do so at all.

Nowadays, new technologies amaze with their characteristics. After all, now you can do without a personnel number, since they came up with a new system - biometric. The biometric system is a new method of recording working hours and collecting all personal data about the employee. Such identifiers are unique because they cannot be destroyed, lost or deceived.

Using them is quite simple and convenient. At the moment, fingerprint identification is practiced. Thanks to such terminals, you can easily record the time you left and came to work, just like a personnel number does. In order for the information to enter the database, you just need to touch the sensor with your finger to scan.

Moreover, such systems include intermediate events during the working day, for example, a lunch break, a business trip, a business trip and much more; you just need to click on a special button that will record this. Many terminals have cameras that take a photograph of the employee after identification. This will only strengthen the company's security level.

Assigning personnel numbers of resigned employees to newly hired employees

Sooner or later, almost all specialists involved in timekeeping at enterprises and organizations ask themselves the question: is it possible to re-assign personnel numbers? Since this is not regulated in any way by law, we have to rely on established practice. And it is such that usually numbers that have already been used either do not find further use, or are assigned to new employees after at least one year has passed from the time the previously registered employee was fired.

Where is personnel number accounting registered?

Enterprises that use personnel records of employees, as a rule, also keep a journal of personnel numbers . It records the following data:

surname, name, patronymic of the employee;
date of hiring;
position and specialty;
number of the employment contract and its date;
the structural unit in which he is registered;
the personnel number itself.

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Summarizing the above information, we can say that keeping time records is a fairly important component of personnel and accounting records. However, when assigning personnel numbers, you should be guided by certain rules that each enterprise has the right to develop independently. However, their violation does not lead to any sanctions from regulatory authorities. However, impeccable timesheets significantly facilitate and optimize the work of HR and accounting departments, allowing you to avoid errors in calculating wages and other payments.