Save pay stubs, attendance records, employment contracts, social insurance documents, and chat logs before leaving your job

Employers carry the evidentiary burden in certain dismissal and wage-reduction disputes, but workers initially need to show overtime occurred. Employers need retain payroll records only for at least two years. Save your own payslips, attendance, contract, social-insurance records and original chats before returning equipment or losing account access.

No expense required. It takes about half an hour to save all these documents. The tricky part is remembering to do it before you leave.

Labor-dispute claimants generally must support their claims. An employer must produce evidence it controls, with adverse consequences for failure; an arbitration tribunal can require production. Employers bear the burden in disputes over dismissal, termination, reduced pay and service calculations. Overtime differs: workers must initially show they worked it; an employer's failure to provide records has adverse consequences once the worker establishes that it holds them. Payroll records need be retained for at least two years, and individual pay statements must be supplied. Without a written contract, payroll, social-insurance records, work IDs, recruitment and attendance records and coworkers' testimony may show employment. Chats are electronic evidence; retain originals, including printouts made directly from the original record. In a Shanghai case, a worker sought ten years of minimum-wage shortfalls. Two courts initially recognized only the final two years, because older payroll evidence was the worker's burden. The worker had ten years of payslips and bank statements. Following an August 2024 application for prosecutorial supervision and a prosecutorial protest, mediation recovered CNY 19,000. The original suit followed staff clearance in 2021, roughly three years earlier.

Save your own employment evidence, not company source code, client lists or technical documents; section 11 covers those risks. Keep original chats on the phone rather than screenshots alone. Save payslips and statements monthly because employers need not retain many years of records. The Shanghai case required a prosecutorial protest, a route most disputes do not reach. Obtain an employment-separation certificate too; see item 17.

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