Is It Okay to Reuse Employee IDs for New Joiners in a Large Company?

Hello Sir/Madam,

I need a suggestion regarding Employee ID. I am working in a private company with a staff of 1500 employees across India. Each employee is assigned a unique Emp ID, but when an employee leaves the company, I reassign their Emp ID to new joiners. However, I ensure that the same Emp ID is not used by two active employees simultaneously. Could you kindly advise if it is acceptable to reuse employee IDs for different employees?

Regards,
HR

I suggest having a unique ID for each employee. Upon retirement, dismissal, or any other form of exit, the same number should not be reused. It is essential to conduct a check to ensure that no active employees share the same ID.

In the armed forces, personnel are assigned a service number that is unique, and this number is never reused once the individual exits the service. I believe this concept is valuable and should be implemented universally.

HRMenaka: You cannot reuse an Employee ID since they are unique identifiers. Reusing an Employee ID will lead to issues with employee records. The recommended strategy for employee ID generation is LocationUniqueCode/EstablishmentCode/EmployeeCode. For example: BOM (which is the Bombay location)/1 (which is the establishment, in this case, 1 = Nariman Point)/00001 (which is the employee code). Since you have 1500 employees currently, adding another numeral will ensure the numerals last longer.

Hope this helps.

When you say "Employee ID," do you mean "Employee Number"? If the answer is "yes," it seems you have adopted a practice from telecom companies that provide mobile services. These companies assign a number to a new subscriber that was surrendered by a previous subscriber due to a shortage of numbers. But why are you running short of numbers? You could assign new numbers as new employees join.

By recycling employee numbers, you might encounter a situation where two or more ex-employees have the same employee number. While this may not impact daily administration, it could cause issues if someone needs to retrieve records.

Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar

Repeating the codes will also be a problem with ERP systems like SAP. Do not do it.

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