Your HR service sends hundreds of pay slips by mail each month. Paper, envelopes, postage, filing: the process takes time and budget for a result that the employee files away in a drawer (or loses).
The dematerialized pay slip addresses many of these irritants, provided that a precise legal framework is respected. Arkevia, a digital safe used by many French companies, positions itself in this niche. Compliance is not just about choosing a provider: it directly engages the employer’s responsibility.
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GDPR Responsibility of the Employer Towards the Digital Safe Provider
Most articles on dematerialization describe the legal obligations without specifying who bears the risk in case of non-compliance. However, the revised CNIL guidelines on digital safes and HR solutions emphasize a crucial point: the employer remains responsible for respecting employees’ rights, even when a provider like Arkevia manages the storage.
In practice, Arkevia acts as a subcontractor in the sense of the GDPR. The company retains the status of data controller. This means that requests for deletion, portability, or access limitation made by an employee must be handled by the employer, not the provider.
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This distribution must be formalized in the service contract and recorded in the company’s processing register. A file detailing the applicable framework for Arkevia e-pay slips on 225 Business explains how this separation of roles translates into the daily practice of payroll services.
Why does this point deserve your attention? Because in the event of a CNIL audit or labor dispute, the absence of contractual formalization can invalidate the entire dematerialization process. The provider supplies the tool, but legal compliance rests on your shoulders.
Employee Information: The Risk of Invalid Delivery of the Pay Slip
Since the Labor Law of 2016 and its implementing decree that came into force in 2017, the employer can provide the pay slip in electronic format by default. The employee has the right to object, without having to justify their refusal.
You may think that checking a box in HR software is enough to inform your employees. This is not the case. Several labor court rulings made in 2023 and 2024 confirmed the invalidity of the dematerialized delivery when the information was lacking. The reasons cited by the judges focused on three recurring gaps:
- The absence of clear information about the digital safe used (provider name, access methods, security guarantees)
- The lack of explicit mention of the retention period and the accessibility of documents over time
- The omission of the possibility for the employee to refuse dematerialization at any time
In these cases, the courts considered that the pay slip had not been validly delivered. The consequences ranged from wage recalls to damages.
Drafting Complete Information for Each Employee
The letter or email of information sent to the employee before the first dematerialized delivery must mention at least the name of the chosen technical solution, the conditions for accessing the safe, the retention period (the law requires availability for fifty years or until the employee turns 75), and the right to revert to paper format without justification.
A simple paragraph in the internal regulations does not replace individual notification. Recent court decisions show that judges examine the actual content of the information provided, not just its formal existence.
Retention Period and Technical Requirements of the Arkevia Safe
The Labor Code sets precise requirements for the retention of electronic pay slips. Three criteria must be met simultaneously:
- Integrity: the document cannot be modified after submission. A simple PDF sent by email does not meet this requirement, as there is no guarantee that it has not been altered
- Confidentiality: only the concerned employee (and authorized persons) can access the document. Data encryption and compartmentalization of personal spaces are required
- Availability: the employee must be able to consult and download their pay slips at any time, throughout the entire legal retention period
Arkevia meets these three criteria through a secure personal space accessible by the employee, regardless of their contractual relationship with the employer. If the employee leaves the company, they retain access to their digital safe and all their documents.
A PDF by Email Has No Legal Value as a Dematerialized Pay Slip
This point often comes up and deserves to be emphasized. Sending a PDF file as an email attachment does not constitute a delivery of a dematerialized pay slip compliant with the law. Only the deposit in a certified digital safe guarantees the legal value of the document. Email does not provide proof of either integrity or availability for fifty years.
eIDAS 2 Regulation and the Future of Retention of Social Documents
The European eIDAS 2 regulation, adopted in 2024, introduces strengthened requirements around qualified digital identities and identity wallets. For companies using a digital safe, this means that signature and retention mechanisms will need to gradually align with these new European standards.
Providers like Arkevia will need to adapt their solutions to integrate these identity wallets. For the employer, the concrete impact remains limited in the short term, but anticipating compliance with eIDAS 2 avoids a rushed migration project in the coming years.
The dematerialized pay slip is not just a simple change of medium. It is a legal commitment from the employer regarding the quality of the information transmitted to the employee, the security of storage, and the sustainability of access to documents. Choosing Arkevia or another digital safe does not exempt you from verifying each link in the compliance chain, from the GDPR subcontracting contract to the individual information letter.