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Privacy Notice - Employees, Former Employees, Workers And Contractors

Privacy Notice - General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Employees, Former Employees, Workers And Contractors



1. WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS DOCUMENT?

Medivet is a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information and we are required under data protection legislation to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.

This privacy notice describes how we collect and use personal information about you during and after your working relationship with us, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) to oversee compliance with this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the DPO. 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. This notice applies to current and former employees, workers and contractors. This notice does not form part of any contract of employment or other contract to provide services. We may 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.

2. DATA PROTECTION PRINCIPLES

Medivet will comply with data protection principles which say 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.
  6. Kept securely.

3. THE KIND OF INFORMATION WE HOLD ABOUT YOU

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.

We will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:

  • Personal details such as name, title, date of birth, gender, marital status, dependants, next of kin, emergency contact information, national insurance number, bank account details, payroll records, copy of photographic identification and benefits information
  • Contact details such as addresses, telephone numbers, and personal email addresses
  • Employment details such as salary, annual leave, pension, benefits information, start date, location of employment or workplace
  • Recruitment information (including copies of right to work documentation, references and other information included in a CV or cover letter or as part of the application process)
  • Employment records (including job titles, work history, working hours, training records, professional memberships, performance information and disciplinary and grievance information)
  • Photographs including for publicity or promotional purposes, CCTV footage and other information obtained through electronic means such as swipecards
  • Information about your use of our information and communications systems including monitoring and listening to telephone calls, reviewing internal files or systems to track work completion and reviewing documents you have created
  • Log of internet history

We may also collect, store and use the following “special categories” of more sensitive personal information:

  • Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation disability and medical or health details
  • Trade union membership
  • Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records
  • Information about criminal convictions and offences
  • Genetic and biometric data

 

4. HOW DOES MEDIVET COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?

We typically collect personal information about employees, workers and contractors through the application and recruitment process, either directly from candidates or from third parties including former employers, credit reference agencies, other background check agencies, recruitment agencies and some social media platforms such as LinkedIn.

We will collect personal information in the course of job-related activities throughout the period you work for us.


5. HOW WE WILL USE PERSONAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOU


Medivet will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. This includes but is not limited to the following grounds:

  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. Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests).
  5. Where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes. 

Examples of how we will process your personal information in accordance with the above grounds are listed below. However, the headings are for guidance only and you will note that some of the grounds will overlap and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your personal information.

Where we need to perform the contract we have entered into with you:

  • Making a decision about your recruitment or appointment.
  • Determining the terms on which you work for us, for example, part-time hours.
  • Paying you and making decisions about salary reviews and compensation.
  • Providing contractual benefits to you.
  • Liaising with your pension provider.
  • Administering the contract we have entered into with you.
  • Ascertaining your fitness to work.
  • Managing sickness absence.
  • 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.
  • Conducting performance reviews, managing performance and determining performance requirements.
  • Assessing qualifications for a particular job or task, including decisions about promotions.

Where we need to comply with a legal obligation:

  • Checking you are legally entitled to work in the UK.
  • Complying with health and safety obligations.
  • If you are an employee, deducting tax and National Insurance contributions.

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:

  • Business management and planning, including accounting and auditing.
  • Education, training and development requirements.
  • Dealing with legal disputes involving you, or other employees, workers and contractors, including accidents at work.
  • 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.
  • Equal opportunities monitoring.

If you fail 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 employees/workers).

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.


6. HOW WE USE PARTICULARLY SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOU


“Special categories” of particularly sensitive personal information 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 grounds:

  1. In limited circumstances, with your explicit written consent.
  2. Where we need to carry out our legal obligations or exercise rights in connection with employment.
  3. Where it is needed in the public interest, such as for equal opportunities monitoring or in relation to our occupational pension scheme, 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 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. 

We will use your particularly sensitive personal or special category information in the following ways:

  • We will use information relating to leaves of absence, which may include sickness absence or family related leaves, 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 will 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.

Do we need your 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 accordance with 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. We will also advise you how you can withdraw your 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 necessary to carry out our obligations. We may also 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.

Where appropriate, given the nature of the role and where we are legally able to do so, 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 way:

  • Acceptance of employment.
  • Suitability of continued employment

We are allowed to use your personal information in this way to carry out our obligations.

7. AUTOMATED DECISION-MAKING


Automated decision-making takes place when an electronic system uses personal information to make a decision without human intervention. We are allowed to use automated decision-making in the following circumstances:

  1. Where we have notified you of the decision and given you 21 days to request a reconsideration.
  2. Where it is necessary to perform the contract with you and appropriate measures are in place to safeguard your rights.
  3. In limited circumstances, with your explicit written consent and where appropriate measures are in place to safeguard your rights. 

If we make an automated decision on the basis of any particularly sensitive personal information, we must have either your explicit written consent or it must be justified in the public interest, and we must also put in place appropriate measures to safeguard your rights.

8. DATA SHARING


We may have to share your data with third parties, including third-party service providers and other entities in the group. We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law.

Sharing your information with third parties and other group entities

We will share your personal information with third parties where required by law (such as HMRC), where it is necessary to administer the working relationship with you 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: HR and payroll system databases, pension administration, benefits provision and administration, IT services, provision of insurance services such as private healthcare and car insurance.

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 will share your personal information with entities in our group as part of our regular reporting activities on company performance, in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise, for system maintenance support and hosting of data.

We may share your personal information with other third parties, for example in the context of the possible sale or restructuring of the business. We may also need to share your personal information with a regulator or to otherwise comply with the law.

Transferring information outside the EU

We may transfer the personal information we collect about you to countries outside the EU in order to perform our contract with you. There will not be an adequacy decision by the European Commission in respect of all of those countries. This means some of the countries to which we transfer your data are not deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for your personal information. However, we as data controller, are under an obligation to ensure that such transfers are performed in a manner that ensures that your personal information is adequately protected. Therefore to ensure that your personal information does receive an adequate level of protection we have put in place the following appropriate measures to ensure that your personal information is treated by those third parties in a way that is consistent with and which respects the EU and UK laws on data protection.

DATA SECURITY

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.

9. 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 our data retention standard.

Retention periods:

  • For employees – 7 years
  • CCTV – 30 days
  • Visitor logs – 6 months from completion of each visitor book

10. RIGHTS OF ACCESS, CORRECTION, ERASURE, AND RESTRICTION

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.

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, also known as data portability.

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 HR 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.

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.

11. RIGHT TO WITHDRAW 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 HR in writing. 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.

12. 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.

If you have any questions about this privacy notice, please contact our Data Protection Officer on mydata@medivet.co.uk