Privacy (GDPR) Statement

This Privacy Notice applies to all our current and former employees, workers, freelancers, contractors and volunteers. Please note that it does not form part of your employment or services contract with us.

General

We collect and process personal data relating to our employees, workers, freelancers, contractors and volunteers in order to enable us to manage our relationships with these individuals. We are committed to being transparent about how we collect and use that data and to meet our data protection obligations in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

The Data Protection Principles

We will comply with the data protection law, including the 6 Principles of GDPR which are:

• to process data lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner;
• to collect data for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes, and not process it in a manner that is incompatible with these purposes;
• to ensure that data is adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purpose for which it is processed;
• to ensure that data is accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date and accurate;
• To ensure that data is kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data is processed;
• To ensure that data is processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the data, including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing and accidental loss, destruction or damage.

What information do we collect?

We collect and process a range of information about our employees, members, trustees, stakeholders and volunteers. This includes;

• your name, address and contact details, including email address and telephone number, date of birth and gender;
• the terms and conditions of your employment or other arrangements with us such as volunteering, freelancing or contracting;
• details of your qualifications, skills, experience and employment history, including start and end dates, with previous employers and with us;
• information about your pay, benefits and remuneration, including pension, sick pay, insurance cover;
• details of your bank account and national insurance number;
• information about your emergency contacts;
• for employees, information about your entitlement to work in the UK;
• where appropriate, information about your criminal record;
• details of your days of work, working hours and attendance at work;

• details of periods of leave taken by you, including holiday, sickness absence, family leave and the reasons for the leave;
• details of any disciplinary or grievance procedures in which you have been involved, including any warnings issued to you and related correspondence;
• assessments of your performance, including appraisals, performance reviews and ratings, training you have participated in, performance improvement plans and related correspondence;
• information about medical or health conditions, including whether or not you have a disability for which we need to make reasonable adjustments;
• details of trade union membership and any other professional memberships or associations;
• equal opportunities monitoring information, including information about your ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health and religion or belief.

We collect this information in a variety of ways. For example, data is collected through application forms, covering letters and CVs, obtained from your passport or other identity documents such as your driving licence, from forms completed by you at the start of or during employment, from correspondence with you or through meetings and other processes.

We will seek information from third parties about you with your consent only. This may include, for example, references supplied by former employers, advice from occupational health providers and information from criminal record checks permitted by law.

Data is stored in a range of different places, including in your personnel file, in our HR management systems and in other IT systems including our email system.

Why do we process personal data?

We will only process your data where we have a legitimate ground to do so.  We need to process data to enter into an agreement with you and to meet our obligations under your employment / freelance contract or volunteer agreement. For example, we need to process your data to provide you with an employment contract, to pay you in accordance with your employment contract and to administer your pension.

In some cases, we need to process data to ensure that we are complying with our legal obligations. For example, we are required by law to check that each employee is entitled to work in the UK, to deduct tax, to comply with health and safety laws and to enable employees to take periods of leave to which they are entitled. For certain positions, it is necessary to carry out criminal records checks to ensure that individuals are permitted to undertake the role in question.

In other cases, we have a legitimate interest in processing personal data before, during and after the end of the employment relationship. Processing employee data allows us to:

• run recruitment processes;
• maintain accurate and up-to-date employment records and contact details, including details of who to contact in the event of an emergency, and records of employee contractual and statutory rights;
• operate and keep a record of disciplinary and grievance processes, to ensure acceptable conduct within the workplace;
• operate and keep a record of employee performance and related processes, to plan for career development, and for succession planning and workforce management purposes;
• operate and keep a record of absence and absence management procedures, to allow effective workforce management and ensure that employees are receiving the pay or other benefits to which they are entitled;
• obtain occupational health advice, to ensure that it complies with duties in relation to individuals with disabilities, meet obligations under health and safety law, and ensure that employees are receiving the pay or other benefits to which they are entitled;
• operate and keep a record of other types of leave including maternity, paternity, adoption, parental and shared parental leave, to allow effective workforce management, to ensure compliance with duties in relation to leave entitlement, and to ensure that employees are receiving the pay or other benefits to which they are entitled;
• ensure effective general HR and business administration;
• provide references on request for current or former employees;
• respond to and defend against legal claims; and
• maintain and promote equality in the workplace.

Some special categories of personal data, such as information about health or medical conditions, is processed to carry out employment law obligations such as those in relation to employees with disabilities and for health and safety purposes.

Where we process other special categories of personal data, such as information about ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health or religion or belief, this is done for the purposes of equal opportunities monitoring. Data that we use for these purposes is anonymised or is collected with the express consent of employees, which can be withdrawn at any time.

Employees are entirely free to decide whether or not to provide such data and there are no consequences of failing to do so.

Who has access to data?

Your information will be shared appropriately and confidentially internally, including with the CEO, finance and IT staff if access to the data is necessary for performance of their roles.

We also share may your data with third parties with your express consent in order to obtain pre-employment references from other employers and obtain necessary criminal records checks from the Disclosure and Barring Service. We may also share your data with third parties in the context of a sale of some or all of our business. In those circumstances the data will be subject to confidentiality arrangements.

We also share your data appropriately and confidentially with third parties that process data on our behalf. This includes payroll providers, pension providers, HR Services, HR cloud storage, benefit providers. The purpose for sharing this data is to enable us to effectively administer our working relationship with you and carry out the terms of our contractual obligations.

We require our third party partners to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law. They must act only in accordance with our instructions and they agree to keep your personal data confidential and secure. We vet our third party partners to ensure that they are compliant with their GDPR processes and their processing obligations on our behalf.

Where we transfer your data to countries outside the European Economic Area we will ensure a similar degree of protection of your information and where necessary we will put in place measures to ensure that your data does receive the adequate level of protection to which you are entitled under GDPR.

How do we protect data?

We take the security of your data seriously. We have internal policies and controls in place to ensure as far as we can that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by its employees in the performance of their duties.

Where we engage third parties to process personal data on our behalf, they do so on the basis of written instructions and under a duty of confidentiality and are obliged to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of data.

For how long do we keep data?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purpose for which we collected it. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the data as well as the purpose for which it was collected.

Your rights

As a data subject, you have a number of rights. You can:

• access and obtain a copy of your data on request;
• require the organisation to change incorrect or incomplete data;
• require the organisation to delete or stop processing your data, for example where the data is no longer necessary for the purposes of processing;
• object to the processing of your data where the organisation is relying on its legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing; and
• ask the organisation to stop processing data for a period if data is inaccurate or there is a dispute about whether or not your interests override the organisation’s legitimate grounds for processing data.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact Tom Armstrong, CEO.

If you believe that we have not complied with your data protection rights we encourage you to raise your concerns with the CEO or a member of the Board of Trustees as soon as is practical.

You also have the right to complain at any time to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.

What if you do not provide personal data?

You have some obligations under your agreement with us provide us with data. In particular, you are required to report absences from work and may be required to provide information about disciplinary or other matters under the implied duty of good faith. You may also have to provide us with data in order to exercise your statutory rights, such as in relation to statutory leave entitlements. Failing to provide the data may mean that you are unable to exercise your statutory rights.

Certain information, such as contact details, your right to work in the UK and payment details, have to be provided to enable us to enter a contract of employment with you. If you do not provide other information, this will hinder our ability to administer the rights and obligations arising as a result of the employment relationship efficiently.

What will happen in the circumstances of an actual or suspected data breach?

The GDPR places a duty on all organisations to report certain personal data breaches to the relevant supervisory authority within 72 hours of becoming aware of the breach. Where the breach is likely to result in a high risk of adversely affecting individual’s’ rights and freedoms it should also be reported to the individual(s) concerned. Robust breach detection, investigation and internal reporting procedures should be in place. The organisation must keep a record of the breach even where there is no obligation to notify the ICO. For further guidance on data breaches please see https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/report-a-breach/personal-data-breach/personal-data-breaches-a-guide