Know Your Employee (KYE)
What Is Know Your Employee (KYE)?
How Does Know Your Employee (KYE) Work?
- Collect worker information. HR or security teams gather the identity and employment information required for the role, such as the person’s legal name, contact details, and evidence of identity or work authorization.
- Verify identity. Identity documents, trusted data sources, or other approved methods are used to establish that the applicant is who they claim to be. In remote workflows, face matching and liveness detection provide additional assurance.
- Conduct role-related checks. Depending on the position and applicable law, the organization may verify employment history, qualifications, licences, right-to-work status, sanctions exposure, or other relevant background information. These checks should be proportionate to the role, applied consistently, and conducted with required notice or consent.
- Record and update results. Verified information and authorized screening results are retained in the employee or contractor record. Rehiring, changes in role or access, expired credentials, or new legal requirements may trigger updated checks.
Who Uses Know Your Employee (KYE)?
How Can Regula Help with Know Your Employee (KYE)?
FAQ
Is Know Your Employee just Know Your Customer for staff?
No. KYC applies identity and due diligence controls to customer relationships, while KYE applies workforce-focused checks to employees, contractors, and other workers. The processes may use similar identity documents and verification methods, but they operate under different legal, privacy, retention, and risk requirements. KYE may also include role-related checks addressing qualifications, right-to-work status, insider risk, or fit-and-proper requirements.
How does Know Your Employee relate to identity and access management?
KYE helps establish who a worker is and whether required identity and role-related checks have been completed. Identity and access management (IAM) uses approved workforce information to create accounts, assign permissions, and manage access throughout the joiner, mover, and leaver lifecycle. Verified KYE attributes may therefore inform IAM decisions, but the two processes are not interchangeable. KYE concerns identity and workforce due diligence, while IAM governs access to systems and resources.
What should operators retain from a Know Your Employee check?
Organizations may retain verified identity information, the evidence examined, verification results, decision records, and authorized manual-review notes. If document images or biometric data are retained, their storage must comply with applicable employment, privacy, security, and sector-specific requirements. Access should be restricted, and personal information should not be kept longer than necessary. Complete records can support reverification, access reviews, audits, and workplace investigations without requiring basic identity evidence to be collected again.
When should Know Your Employee checks be refreshed?
KYE checks may need to be refreshed when a worker is rehired, returns after a long absence, changes identity details, or moves into a regulated or higher-risk role. Expired credentials, account-recovery requests, inconsistent records, or suspected identity fraud may also trigger reverification. Periodic reviews may be appropriate for privileged or regulated positions where permitted by law and organizational policy. The scope of each review should reflect what has changed and the risk involved rather than automatically repeating every original check.
How do document verification and face matching support Know Your Employee?
Document verification helps determine whether an employee or contractor is presenting an authentic identity document. Face matching compares the applicant’s facial image with the document portrait, while liveness detection helps confirm that a real person is present during remote verification. Together, these checks strengthen confidence that the applicant is the document holder before workforce accounts or sensitive access are granted.
