Employees usually have the right to see at least some portion of their own personnel records.

Generally, you should treat personnel files as private records belonging to you and your individual employees. You don't want to allow just anyone in the company to rummage through the performance evaluations, salaries, and job applications of coworkers.

But there are employees who have a legitimate need to view the information in a personnel file. For example, a supervisor may need to review performance evaluations to decide whether to promote an employee, or the human resources manager may need to review an employee's salary information to decide what to pay a new hire in the same position. And, in most states, employees have the right to inspect their own personnel files.