What should I do if an employee left and their work text messages only exist on a personal phone we no longer have access to?

Work-related text messages can be records regardless of the device they live on. If an employee conducted official business by text on a personal phone, those messages were records the moment they were created — and the organization’s recordkeeping and legal-hold obligations did not end when the person left. Losing access to the device is a problem to manage, not a reason the obligation disappears.

Confirm whether the messages are records

Content, not the device or app, determines record status. Ask whether the texts document business decisions, transactions, approvals, or other activity your retention schedule would otherwise capture. If they do, they should be preserved and accessible for their full retention period, and they may be responsive to litigation holds, audits, or public-records or FOIA requests.

Try every avenue to recover the content

Before treating the records as lost, pursue recovery in good faith:

• Carrier and account records. Wireless carriers retain limited message data and call/text logs for varying periods; a timely, properly authorized request (or legal process where required) may recover some content or metadata.
• The other side of the conversation. Texts have at least two parties. Counterparts, colleagues, or customers may still hold the same threads.
• Backups and linked devices. Cloud backups, a synced tablet or computer, or a replacement device may contain copies.
• The former employee. A cooperative offboarding request, consistent with your policies, may produce exports or screenshots.

Document your efforts and assess the gap

If content cannot be recovered, record what you searched, when, and the result. Defensible, documented effort matters if the records are later sought. Then assess exposure: were any messages under a legal hold, or responsive to a pending request? Notify counsel and the records or information-governance lead promptly, because spoliation and accountability concerns are heightened once preservation duties have attached.

Close the gap going forward

Treat this as a control failure to fix. Strengthen policies that prohibit conducting business on unmanaged personal devices, require timely capture of mobile messages into a managed repository, and build text-message preservation into offboarding. For broader guidance, see the email and messaging topic hub.

The core principle: device ownership does not change record status — your duty is to make a reasonable, documented effort to preserve and produce the records, and to prevent the gap from recurring.