What happens to staff member's data after they leave the university

When a staff member leaves the university there is no expectation on them to delete any of their files or emails. They may choose to do this for information they consider particularly private but this is unusual. Staff members should forward any files / emails they wish to keep (and that are appropriate within the terms of our employment contracts) or else they will be lost once the staff member ceases their employment.

Email and Teams messages and OneDrive files are managed by IDG and so you should contact them with specific questions. In general however you will lose access to your account at the end of your final day of employment. Your account is then left in a disabled state for 500 days before being fully deleted. This period is to allow the university to respond to any legal requirements to access any data in the account. Such access is very rare and is only available to a very small group of staff within the central university administration.

Files on your laptop will be destroyed. How this is done depends on the age of your returned device and whether it is considered suitable for redeployment.

Laptops in good condition that are less than 2 years old may be considered suitable for redeployment. In such cases the laptop will be completely overwritten by a new copy of Windows making it impractical to access any of the files previously held on the device.

Laptops that are not considered fit for redeployment will be stored in the locked eSolutions store for at least 30 days. This is to allow for any cases where emergency access to the device is required. Any such access would need to be approved by the Head of WBS HR or the Chief Operating Officer. After 30 days the device is disposed off via the university IT disposal service, full details of which are available at https://warwick.ac.uk/services/idg/services-support/disposals

Any files stored in shared file locations (your group’s I drive or Sharepoint sites) are considered to be owned by the University of Warwick and so will not be automatically deleted.