Employee Privacy Notice
Sphere Risk Health & Safety Management Limited is aware of its obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and is committed to processing your data securely and transparently. This privacy notice sets out, in line with GDPR, the types of data that we hold on you as an employee. It also sets out how we use that information, how long we keep it for and other relevant information about your data.
This notice applies to current and former employees, workers and contractors.
Data controller details
We are a data controller, meaning that it determines the processes to be used when using your personal data. Our contact details are as follows:
Sphere Risk Health & Safety Management
First Floor
Minerva House
Minerva Park
Peterborough
PE2 6FT
Data protection principles
In relation to your personal data, we will:
- Process it fairly, lawfully and in a clear, transparent way
- Collect your data only for reasons that we find proper for the course of your employment in ways that have been explained to you
- Only use it in the way that we have told you about
- Ensure it is correct and up to date
- Keep your data for only as long as we need it
- Process it in a way that ensures it will not be used for anything that you are not aware of or have consented to (as appropriate), lost or destroyed
Types of data we process
We hold many types of data about you, depending on your contract type, these include:
- your personal details including your name, address, date of birth, email address, phone numbers
- your photograph
- gender
- marital status (Mrs/Miss/Ms/Mr)
- dependants, next of kin and their contact numbers
- medical or health information including whether or not you have a disability
- information included on your CV including references, education history and employment history
- documentation relating to your right to work in the UK
- driving licence
- bank details
- tax codes
- National Insurance number
- current and previous job titles, job descriptions, pay grades, pension entitlement, hours of work and other terms and conditions relating to your employment with us
- letters of concern, formal warnings and other documentation with regards to any disciplinary proceedings
- internal performance information including measurements against targets, formal warnings and related documentation with regards to capability procedures, appraisal forms
- leave records including annual leave, family leave, sickness absence etc
- details of your criminal record
- training details
How we collect your data
We collect data about you in a variety of ways and this will usually start when we undertake a recruitment exercise where we will collect the data from you directly. This includes the information you would normally include in a CV or a recruitment cover letter, or notes made by our recruiting officers during a recruitment interview. Further information will be collected directly from you when you complete forms at the start of your employment, for example, your bank and next of kin details. Other details may be collected directly from you in the form of official documentation such as your driving licence, passport or other right to work evidence.
In some cases, we will collect data about you from third parties, such as employment agencies and former employers when gathering references.
Personal data is kept securely within personnel files.
Why we process your data
The law on data protection allows us to process your data for certain reasons only, these include only in order:
- to perform the employment contract that we are party to
- to carry out legally required duties
- for us to carry out our legitimate interests
- to protect your interests and
- whereby something is done in the public interest.
All of the processing carried out by us falls into one of the permitted reasons. Generally, we will rely on the first three reasons set out above to process your data. For example, we need to collect your personal data in order to:
- carry out the employment contract that we have entered into with you and
- ensure you are paid.
We also need to collect your data to ensure we are complying with legal requirements such as:
- ensuring tax and National Insurance is paid
- carrying out checks in relation to your right to work in the UK and
- making reasonable adjustments for disabled employees.
We also collect data so that we can carry out activities which are in our legitimate interests. We have set these out below:
- making decisions about who to offer initial employment to, and subsequent internal appointments, promotions etc
- making decisions about salary and other benefits
- providing contractual benefits to you
- maintaining comprehensive up to date personnel records about you to ensure, amongst other things, effective correspondence can be achieved and appropriate contact points in the event of an emergency are maintained
- effectively monitoring both your conduct and your performance and to undertake procedures if the need arises
- offering a method of recourse for you against decisions made about you via a grievance procedure
- assessing training needs
- implementing an effective sickness absence management system including monitoring the amount of leave and subsequent actions to be taken including the making of reasonable adjustments
- gaining expert medical opinion when making decisions about your fitness for work
- managing statutory leave and pay systems such as maternity leave and pay
- business planning and restructuring exercises
- dealing with legal claims made against us
- preventing fraud
- ensuring our administrative and IT systems are secure and robust against unauthorised access
Special categories of data
Special categories of data are data relating to your:
- health
- sex life
- sexual orientation
- race
- ethnic origin
- political opinion
- religion
- trade union membership
- genetic and biometric data.
We must process special categories of data in accordance with more stringent guidelines. Most commonly, we will process special categories of data when the following applies:
- you have given explicit consent to the processing
- we must process the data in order to carry out our legal obligations
- we must process data for reasons of substantial public interest
- you have already made the data public.
We will use your special category data:
- in our sickness absence management procedures
- to determine reasonable adjustments
We do not need your consent if we use special categories of personal data in order to carry out our legal obligations or exercise specific rights under employment law. However, we may ask for your consent to allow us to process certain particularly sensitive data. If this occurs, you will be made fully aware of the reasons for the processing. As with all cases of seeking consent from you, you will have full control over your decision to give or withhold consent and there will be no consequences where consent is withheld. Consent, once given, may be withdrawn at any time. There will be no consequences where consent is withdrawn.
Criminal conviction data
We will only collect criminal conviction data where it is appropriate given the nature of your role and where the law permits us. This data will usually be collected at the recruitment stage, in relation to driving offences and/or DBS as applicable, however, may also be collected during your employment.
We process this data because of our legal obligation to provide safeguarding provisions to clients where applicable with their terms of engagement. We rely on the lawful basis to process this data only where applicable to meet our contractual duties with clients.
If you do not provide your data to us
One of the reasons for processing your data is to allow us to carry out our duties in line with your contract of employment. If you do not provide us with the data needed to do this, we will unable to perform those duties e.g. ensuring you are paid correctly. We may also be prevented from confirming, or continuing with, your employment with us in relation to our legal obligations if you do not provide us with this information e.g. confirming your right to work in the UK or, where appropriate, confirming your legal status for carrying out your work via a criminal records check.
Sharing your data
Your data will be shared with colleagues where it is necessary for them to undertake their duties. This includes, for example, your line manager for their management of you, for maintaining personnel records and the administering of payroll payment under your contract of employment.
We do not currently share your data with any third party which requires your consent as these third parties fall within a contractual reason, these include:
- HR Your Business Matters, F37 Brightfield Business Hub, Bakewell Road, Orton Southgate, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, PE2 6XU.
We may also share your data with third parties as part of a Company sale or restructure, or for other reasons to comply with a legal obligation upon us. We do not share your data with bodies outside of the European Economic Area.
Protecting your data
We are aware of the requirement to ensure your data is protected against accidental loss or disclosure, destruction and abuse. We have implemented processes to guard against such. We have implemented a privacy/cookie policy, GDPR compliance checks with parties applicable and a data security review.
Where we share your data with third parties, we provide written instructions to them to ensure that your data are held securely and in line with GDPR requirements. Third parties must implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of your data.
How long we keep your data for
In line with data protection principles, we only keep your data for as long as we need it for, which will be at least for the duration of your employment with us though in some cases we will keep your data for a period after your employment has ended.
Retention periods can vary depending on why we need your data, as set out below:
Your whole employment file will be kept for a period of 6 months. After this time we will only keep data relevant for taxation or HMRC reasons plus to defend any applicable claim. This period extends to a period of 7 years in total. After this time we will only keep information on file that will allow us to confirm an employment reference should it be requested.
Automated decision making
No decision will be made about you solely on the basis of automated decision making (where a decision is taken about you using an electronic system without human involvement) which has a significant impact on you. We do not use any automatic decision-making systems.
Your rights in relation to your data
The law on data protection gives you certain rights in relation to the data we hold on you. These are:
- the right to be informed. This means that we must tell you how we use your data, and this is the purpose of this privacy notice
- the right of access. You have the right to access the data that we hold on you. To do so, you should make a subject access request. You can read more about this in our Subject Access Request policy which is available within the GDPR Policies Handbook
- the right for any inaccuracies to be corrected. If any data that we hold about you is incomplete or inaccurate, you are able to require us to correct it
- the right to have information deleted. If you would like us to stop processing your data, you have the right to ask us to delete it from our systems where you believe there is no reason for us to continue processing it
- the right to restrict the processing of the data. For example, if you believe the data we hold is incorrect, we will stop processing the data (whilst still holding it) until we have ensured that the data is correct
- the right to portability. You may transfer the data that we hold on you for your own purposes
- the right to object to the inclusion of any information. You have the right to object to the way we use your data where we are using it for our legitimate interests
- the right to regulate any automated decision-making and profiling of personal data. You have a right not to be subject to automated decision making in way that adversely affects your legal rights
Where you have provided consent to our use of your data, you also have the unrestricted right to withdraw that consent at any time. Withdrawing your consent means that we will stop processing the data that you had previously given us consent to use. There will be no consequences for withdrawing your consent. However, in some cases, we may continue to use the data where so permitted by having a legitimate reason for doing so.
If you wish to exercise any of the rights explained above, please contact a Company Director.
Making a complaint
The supervisory authority in the UK for data protection matters is the Information Commissioner (ICO). If you think your data protection rights have been breached in any way by us, you are able to make a complaint to the ICO.