GDPR PRIVACY NOTICE – Employees, Workers, Consultants and Candidates
Introduction
Paws Galore Pet Sitters Ltd (“the Company”) is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information.
This privacy notice describes how we collect and use personal information about you before, during and after your working relationship with us, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
It applies to all candidates, employees, workers and contractors.
The Company is a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are required under the GDPR to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.
This notice does not form part of any contract of employment or other contract to provide services. We may amend or update this notice at any time.
It is important that you read this notice, together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information.
Data Protection Principles
We will comply with data protection law. In summary this says that the personal information we hold about you must be:
1. Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
2. Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
3. Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
4. Accurate and kept up to date.
5. Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about and kept securely.
Information Held
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data). There are “special categories” of more sensitive personal data which require a higher level of protection (see below).
Candidates
As an applicant for employment or consultancy by the Company we shall collect and hold the personal information about you which you provide to us when completing and submitting your application.
If you are an employee or candidate for employment we may also ask you to provide health information. Health information is a category of sensitive personal information (as to which see section headed “Use of Sensitive Personal Information” below). The Company asks applicants for employment to provide certain details relating to their health to enable the Company to establish whether they can carry out a function which is intrinsic to the work concerned and to discover whether it is necessary to make any reasonable adjustments to its recruitment process to assist you.
We may also ask all candidates to provide details of criminal convictions by providing us with a DBS certificate. These are a special category of personal information which are dealt with further below. If you are a candidate for employment the Company asks for the information in order to comply with its legal obligations and to exercise its rights conferred by law to enquire about unspent convictions. If you are a candidate for a consultancy contract then we will ask you to consent to our processing this information.
Other personal information contained in your application will be reviewed by the managers involved in the engagement process in order to assess your suitability for potential employment or a consultancy contract.
If your application is unsuccessful your application and any information supplied with it will be retained by the Company for up to 6 months and then discarded. Alternatively, if you are employed or engaged by the Company as an employee, worker or contractor it shall be retained and stored securely by the Company for the duration of your employment and for a reasonable period thereafter. We will not retain a copy of the DBS certificate beyond any period necessary to consider or verify its contents.
Employees, Workers & Contractors
If you become an employee, worker or contractor of the Company, we will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:
- Personal contact details such as name, title, postal address, telephone numbers, and a personal email address.
- Date of birth.
- Gender.
- Marital status and dependants. (Employees only)
- Next of kin and emergency contact information. (Employees only)
- National Insurance number, payroll records and tax status information. (Employees only)
- Bank account details
- Salary, annual leave, pension and benefits information. (Employees only)
- Start date.
- Location of employment or workplaces.
- Copy of driving licence. (Employees only)
- Speeding Penalty Notices (Company vehicle drivers only).
- Penalty Notices for parking and minor road traffic offences and data from a vehicles tracking device (Company vehicle drivers only).
- Motor vehicle details (for employees using their own vehicle on the Company’s business)).
- Recruitment information (including copies of right to work documentation, references and other information included in a CV or cover letter or application form as part of the application process).
- Qualification and employment records (including job titles, work history, working hours, training records and professional qualifications and memberships).
- Accident records.
- Compensation history.
- Performance information.
- Information relating to work attendance and absence and punctuality. (Employees only)
- Disciplinary and grievance information.
- Information about your use of our information and communications systems.
- Photographs and biographical information
We may also collect, store and use the following “special categories” of more sensitive personal information for employees only:
- Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and political opinions.
- Trade union membership.
- Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records.
We may also collect, store and use special category information about criminal convictions for employees, workers and contractors.
Collection of Personal Information
We collect personal information about employees, workers and contactors through the application and recruitment process, either directly from candidates or sometimes from an employment agency or background check provider. We may also collect additional information from third parties including former employers, credit reference agencies or other background check agencies.
We will collect additional personal information in the course of job-related activities throughout the period of your working for us.
We may also collect limited personal information relating to members of your family or a partner where this is required so that we have contact details for next of kin in the event or an emergency or where the person concerned is the authorised user of a Company motor vehicle in which case it will be necessary for the Company to obtain and store a copy of their driving licence.
Use of Personal Information
We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances:
1. Where we need to perform the contract we have entered into with you.
2. Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.
3. Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
4. In the case of contractors, with your consent.
We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare: (1) Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests); or (2) Where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.
We need all the categories of information in the list above to allow us to perform our contract with you and to enable us to comply with legal obligations. In some cases we may use your personal information to pursue legitimate interests of our own or those of third parties, provided your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. The situations in which we will process your personal information are listed below.
- Making a decision about your recruitment or appointment.
- Determining the terms on which you work or contract for us.
- Checking you are legally entitled to work in the UK.
- Paying you and, if you are an employee, deducting tax and National Insurance contributions.
- Providing employment benefits to you such as a pension.
- Liaising with your pension provider.
- Administering the contract we have entered into with you.
- Business management and planning, including accounting and auditing.
- Conducting performance reviews, managing performance and determining performance requirements.
- Making decisions about salary reviews and compensation.
- Assessing qualifications for a particular job or task, including decisions about promotions.
- Gathering evidence for possible grievance or disciplinary hearings.
- Making decisions about your continued employment or engagement.
- Making arrangements for the termination of our working relationship.
- Education, training and development requirements.
- Dealing with legal disputes involving you, or other employees, workers and contractors, including accidents at work.
- Determining whether you may work in certain environments such as schools and hospitals
- Ascertaining your fitness to work.
- Managing sickness absence.
- Complying with health and safety obligations.
- To prevent fraud.
- To monitor your use of our information and communication systems to ensure compliance with our IT policies.
- To ensure network and information security, including preventing unauthorised access to our computer and electronic communications systems and preventing malicious software distribution.
- To conduct data analytics studies to review and better understand employee retention and attrition rates.
- To control access to the Company’s site and buildings
- Equal opportunities monitoring.
- In the case of photographs of you and biographic details about you, for the purposes of advertising our and your services to potential customers
- To assess your suitability to have access to the property of customers
Some of the above grounds for processing will overlap and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your personal information.
Failure to Provide Personal Information
If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have entered into with you (such as paying you or providing a benefit), or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations (such as to ensure the health and safety of our workers and contractors).
Change of Purpose
We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
Use of Sensitive Personal Information
The “special categories” of sensitive personal information referred to above require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal information. We may process special categories of personal information in the following circumstances:
1. In some circumstances, with your explicit written consent
2. Where we need to carry out our legal obligations or where we have a legal right and in line with our data protection policy.
3. Where it is needed in the public interest, such as for equal opportunities monitoring and in line with our data protection policy.
4. Where it is needed to assess your working capacity on health grounds, subject to appropriate confidentiality safeguards.
5. Where it is needed to assess your suitability to work with children or in places such as hospitals.
Less commonly, we may process this type of information where it is needed in relation to legal claims or where it is needed to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent, or where you have already made the information public.
Our Obligations as Employer
We will use your particularly sensitive personal information in the following ways:
- We will use information relating to leave of absence, which may include sickness absence or family related leave, to comply with employment and other laws.
- We will use information about your physical or mental health, or disability status, to ensure your health and safety in the workplace and to assess your fitness to work, to provide appropriate workplace adjustments, to monitor and manage sickness absence and to administer benefits.
- We may use information about your race or national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, or your sexual life or sexual orientation, to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting, but do not routinely do so at present
- We may use trade union membership information to pay trade union premiums, register the status of a protected employee and to comply with employment law obligations, but do not routinely do so at present.
Consent
We do not need your consent if we use special categories of your personal information in accordance with our written policy to carry out our legal obligations or exercise specific rights in the field of employment law. In limited circumstances, we may approach you for your written consent to allow us to process certain particularly sensitive data. If we do so, we will provide you with full details of the information that we would like and the reason we need it, so that you can carefully consider whether you wish to consent. You should be aware that it is not a condition of your contract with us that you agree to any request for consent from us.
Information about Criminal Convictions
We may only use information relating to criminal convictions where the law allows us to do so. This will usually be where such processing is with your consent (where you are a contractor), necessary to carry out our obligations or where we have a legal right to process and provided we do so in line with our data protection policy.
Less commonly, we may use information relating to criminal convictions where it is necessary in relation to legal claims, where it is necessary to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent, or where you have already made the information public.
We do envisage that we will process information about criminal convictions.
We will only collect information about criminal convictions if it is appropriate given the nature of the role and where we are legally able to do so. Where appropriate, we will collect information about criminal convictions as part of the recruitment process or we may be notified of such information directly by you in the course of you working for us. We will use information about criminal convictions and offences in the following ways:
- Assessing your suitability for employment or engagement.
- Making decisions about your continued employment or engagement.
- Assessing your suitability to be entrusted with access to a customer’s property.
We are allowed to use your personal information in this way where it is necessary to comply with our legal obligations, it is necessary for our legitimate interests (and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests) and it is also necessary for the purposes of exercising rights conferred by law on us in connection with employment and provided we do so in line with our data protection policy.
If you are a contractor then we will use information relating to criminal convictions with your consent.
Data Sharing
We may have to share your data with third parties, including third-party service providers.
We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law.
We may transfer your personal information outside the EU. If we do, you can expect a similar degree of protection in respect of your personal information.
Third Parties
We will share your personal information with third parties where required by law, where it is necessary to administer the working relationship with you (for example to clients of our service or to pay your pension contributions) or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so.
“Third parties” includes third-party service providers (including contractors and designated agents) and other entities within our group. The following activities are carried out by third-party service providers: pension administration, benefits provision and administration, IT services.
All our third-party service providers and other entities in the group are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
We may share your personal information with other third parties, for example in the context of the possible sale or restructuring of the business or in sharing criminal records data in accordance with our and the third party’s legal obligations. We may also need to share your personal information with a regulator or to otherwise comply with the law.
Data Security
We have put in place appropriate measures to protect the security of your information.
Third parties will only process your personal information on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure.
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.
Data Retention
We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you. Once you are no longer an employee, worker or contractor of the Company we will retain and securely destroy your personal information in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.
Rights of Access, Correction, Erasure & Restriction
Duty to inform us of changes
It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your working relationship with us.
Rights in connection with personal information
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
- Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
- Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
- Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
- Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
- Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
- Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.
If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact the Company’s Personnel Officer in writing.
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.
What we may need from you
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.
Withdrawing Consent
In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact Kacey Curtis. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.
Complaints
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.
Changes to this Privacy Notice
We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.
Queries
If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact Kacey Curtis.