Guide
Keeping a contact details history
This is the requirement most systems fail without anyone noticing, because failing it looks exactly like good housekeeping.
The requirement
A history of the worker’s contact details — UK residential address, personal email, telephone — kept up to date. Both parts of that sentence are load-bearing.
Why an update fails it
When somebody moves, the instinctive action is to overwrite the address. Post now goes to the right place, and the record of where they lived before, and until when, is gone. The file looks tidier and holds less than it did.
An HR system or spreadsheet with one address field per person cannot satisfy this requirement, however diligently it is maintained.
A change and a correction are different
Somebody moving house is a change: the old address was true, then stopped being true, and both belong in the history.
A mistyped address, or one that belonged to a different worker, is a correction: it was never true. Presenting it as history would put a false record in front of an inspector, and data protection law separately requires inaccurate data to be put right.
Any system handling this properly has to tell those two apart, because the right outcome is different for each.
What good looks like
Current details visible where people need them. Full history, with the dates each version was current, available in the pack. Nothing ever typed over.
Discuss the records relevant to your organisation.
Fifteen minutes on what you hold today and what would be asked for.