Who has got the right to keep original training certificates?
Hello,
would a specialist be able to tell me who has got the right to keep the certificates of any kind of training if company paid for it and nothing is mentioned in policies or contract and no agreements were done?
Is there any legislation regarding it?
thanks
Some general thoughts:
IIRC in UK law most contracts would be interpreted contra proferentum, i.e. "against" the party that wrote it. If the contract of employment didn't specify that the employer retains ownership of certificates then I would expect the employee to have an entirely reasonable claim to ownership of them.
Some contracts stipulate that training costs must be repaid (partially or in full) if you leave within a defined period of completing training, but again I'd expect these to still give ownership of the certificate / qualification to the employee.
There may also be a GDPR-related argument possible here too, as the training information is personal data so there could be a question as to what legitimate purpose the company has with it if the employ no longer works there?
Lastly, the employer may have paid for the training, but the certificate is arguably issued to the named party, i.e the employee that took the training.
If my employer were to withhold a certificate in this circumstance I'd feel fairly confident about challenging it ;)
Hi ! I am an HR Head/ HACCP Coordinator... For our company, our philosophy is- since we (the company) paid for the trainings, we keep the original certificate and give copies to our personnel who attended the trainings. Hope this helps.
I always try to forward the training related e-mails to my personal e-mail so that I have record of the training for my files. You should always at least have a copy of your training. Even so I have lost records of training that was a decade ago. I reached out to a training company about a month ago to see if I could get a replacement certificate and they stated that I had to get permission from the company that paid for the training. Somethings are just not worth the frustration.
Is this an employer you no longer work for? Or do you still work there but want the certificate for personal reasons?
If you're no longer there I don't see how much good a piece of paper with an ex-employee's name on it does for them.....