Privacy Notice for Employees

The College collects and processes personal data relating to its employees to manage the employment relationship. The College is committed to being transparent about how it collects and uses that data and to meeting its data protection obligations.

Purpose of holding this personal information

The College needs to process data to enter into an employment contract with you and to meet its obligations under your employment contract. For example, it needs to process your data to provide you with an employment contract, to pay you in accordance with your employment contract and to administer pension entitlements.

In some cases, the College needs to process data to ensure that it is complying with its legal obligations. For example, it is required to check an employee’s entitlement 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. It is necessary to carry out the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check that is required of all staff employed by the College.

In other cases, the College has a legitimate interest in processing personal data before, during and after the end of the employment relationship.

Processing employee data allows the organisation 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 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 its 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 that the organisation complies 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 the College processes 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 the organisation uses 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 internally, including with members of the HR team, your line manager, the Senior Leadership Team, and IT staff if access to the data is necessary for performance of their roles.

The College shares your data with third parties in order to obtain pre-employment references from other employers, and to obtain necessary criminal records checks from the Disclosure and Barring Service.

The college also shares your data with third parties that process data on its behalf, in connection with payroll and pensions, the provision of benefits and the provision of occupational health services.

The College will not transfer your data to countries outside the European Economic Area.

Retaining your information

In general, staff information will be kept for seven years after a member of staff leaves. Some information however will be kept for much longer – this includes information necessary in respect of pensions, taxation, potential or current disputes or litigation regarding the employment, and information required for job references.

What if you do not provide personal data?

You have some obligations under your employment contract to provide the College 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 the College 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 the College to enter a contract of employment with you. If you do not provide other information, this will hinder the College’s ability to administer the rights and obligations arising as a result of the employment relationship efficiently.

For more information about how the College manages Data Protection issues please visit the Data Protection section of the College’s website.

Personal information that you provide and that we hold about you

The College collects and processes a range of information about you. 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;
  details of your qualifications, skills, experience and employment history, including start and end dates, with previous employers and with the College;
• information about your remuneration, including entitlement to benefits such as pensions;
• details of your bank account and national insurance number;
• information about your marital status, next of kin, dependants and emergency contacts;
• information about your nationality and entitlement to work in the UK;
• information about your criminal record;
• your photograph;
• details of your working hours and attendance at work;
• details of periods of leave taken by you, including holiday, sickness absence, and 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 disclosed a disability for which the organisation needs to make reasonable adjustments;
• details of trade union membership; and
• equal opportunities monitoring information that you have disclosed, including information about your ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health and religion or belief.

The College collects this information in a variety of ways. For example, data is collected through application forms 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 interviews, meetings or other assessments.

The College also seeks information from third parties, such as references, with your consent only. Data is stored in a range of different places, including in your personnel file, in the College’s HR systems and in other IT systems (including the College’s email system).

The lawful basis on which we use this information

Under the GDPR, it is necessary for the College to demonstrate the lawfulness of processing your personal information. There are a number of different bases on which the College may store and process your personal information. These are contractual reasons, legal obligation, public task, legitimate interest, vital interest and consent. Further information about the specific basis on which we store and process any of your personal information can be obtained from the Data Protection Officer at the College – dataprotection@barton.ac.uk.

How does the College protect data?

The College takes the security of your data seriously. It has internal policies and controls in place to try to ensure 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 the organisation engages third parties to process personal data on its behalf, they do so on the basis of written instructions, are under a duty of confidentiality and are obliged to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of data.

Your rights

Under data protection legislation, you have the right to request access to the information that we hold about you. A request to access your personal information is known as a ‘Subject Access Request’ (SAR) and can be made by completing the Rights of Access Form. Please read the Right of Access Policy before completing this form. Once completed please send the form to dataprotection@barton.ac.uk.

In most cases there is no fee for a SAR and the College will respond to you within one month.

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

• access and obtain a copy of your data on request;
• require the College to change incorrect or incomplete data;
• require the College 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 College is relying on its legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing; and
• ask the College to stop processing data for a period if data is inaccurate or there is a dispute about whether or not your interests override the College’s legitimate grounds for processing data.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above or wish to ask questions about the way in which we store and process your personal information please contact dataprotection@barton.ac.uk.

If you believe that the organisation has not complied with your data protection rights, you can complain to the Information Commissioner.