Employee Privacy Policy
Specialist Lending Limited Employee Privacy Notice
This privacy notice applies to all job applicants, employees, contractors and voluntary workers.
Specialist Lending Limited is a data controller and takes the security of your data very seriously. We are committed to ensuring that your personal data is always processed fairly, transparently and lawfully. It is important to us that you understand exactly how we will use, process and may share any personal information about you and that you are aware why we are using your personal information. This data is collected from your first employment application, during the currency of your employment and for as long as required to fulfil our legal and regulatory responsibilities or for other legitimate reasons as permitted by law after your employment ends.
This notice does not form part of any contract of employment or other contract to provide services and we may update or amend this notice at any time.
1) General data protection principles
In collecting and processing your personal information, we will comply with the applicable data protection laws in force from time to time in England and Wales, including but not limited to, the Data Protection Act 2018, the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) 2003, the General Data Protection Regulations (EU) 2016/679, as amended or updated from time to time.
This requires that the personal information we hold about you must be:
– Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
– Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
– Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
– Accurate and kept up to date.
– Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
– Kept securely.
2) What categories of information do we collect about you?
We may process some or all of the following:
– Personal Information (including your name, date of birth, address, telephone number and email).
– Banking and Financial Records including bank details, payroll records, National Insurance and tax information.
– Next of kin and emergency contact information (i.e. name, relationship and home and mobile telephone numbers and personal email address).
– Characteristics Information, including special category data (such as gender, age, ethnic group and medical information).
– Contract Information (such as start date, role, salary, FTE, employee benefits and pensions information).
– Background Check Information (including information collected during recruitment such as that contained within your CV or cover letter,
employment, education and qualifications, civil and criminal records, credit history, health records, identification checks).
– Training records.
– Professional memberships.
– Details of your spouse / partner and any dependants.
– Attendance Record Information (Sickness, Holiday or other leave)
– Performance related Information (including performance review ratings and training and development plans)
– Disciplinary and Grievance Record Information either where you have raised the issue / been subject to the issue or where you have been
otherwise involved, for example as a witness.
– Photographs.
– CCTV footage and other information obtained through electronic means such as swipe card records.
– Information about your use of our IT, communication and other systems, and other monitoring information.
– Details in references about you that we give to others.
3) How we collect the information
We collect personal information about employees and workers through the application and recruitment process, either directly from candidates or sometimes from an employment agency or background check providers.
We may sometimes collect additional information from third parties including former employers in the course of job-related activities throughout the period of you working for us, including from credit reference agencies or other background check agencies, the Home Office, pension administrators, our clients where you are working or have worked on their sites, your doctors, from medical and occupational health professionals we engage, from our insurance benefit administrators, the DBS, other employees, door entry systems, swipe card systems, automated monitoring of our websites and other technical systems, such as our computer networks and connections, CCTV, access control systems, remote access systems, email and instant messaging systems, intranet, telephones and voicemail.
4) How will we use the information we collect?
We only hold personal data directly relevant to your employment. We will only use the personal information where the law allows us most commonly where we need to in order to perform the contract we have entered into with you, where we need to comply with a legal obligation and / or 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.
More rarely, we may also use your personal information where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests) and / or where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.
The situations in which we will process your information are outlined below:-
– To make a decision about your recruitment or appointment.
– To determine the terms on which you work for us.
– To check you are legally entitled to work in the UK.
– To ensure correct and legal information under contract of employment and with legislative bodies such as HMRC.
– To enable payment of salary / wages / NI / tax / pension contributions / expenses / other benefits, including pension, connected with your
employment.
– For business management and planning, including accounting and auditing.
– To make decisions about salary reviews and compensation.
– To assess qualifications for a particular job or task, including decisions about promotions.
– To ensure employees have access to effective recourse if they have any concerns about their employment.
– To take appropriate action in the event of any conduct or performance concerns.
– To maintain appropriate levels of conduct and performance.
– To gather evidence for possible grievance or disciplinary hearings.
– To ensure employees’ / volunteers’ legal rights are met.
– To protect employees’ / volunteers’ health and safety.
– To take appropriate action in the event of any concerns about an employee’s attendance and/or health and to ascertain your fitness to work /
perform the services you are engaged to provide.
– To plan staffing levels and any necessary absence cover.
– To ensure legal rights are met.
– To protect clients / others involved in client care.
– To take appropriate action in the event of any concerns raised about an employee / volunteer.
– To make decisions about continued employment or engagement.
– To make arrangements for the termination of our working relationship.
– For education, training and development requirements.
– For dealing with legal disputes involving you, other employees, workers, contractors or volunteers 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.
– For equal opportunities monitoring.
Where we use your personal information to pursue the legitimate interests of the business, we will only do so provided your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
We will notify you of any material changes to information we collect or to the purposes for which we collect and process it.
Special category data requires higher levels of protection. We may need to process special categories of personal information in the following circumstances:-
– Occasionally, with your explicit written consent.
– Where we need to carry out our legal obligations.
– Where it is needed in the public interest, such as for equal opportunities monitoring or in relation to our pension scheme.
– Where it is needed to assess your working capacity on health grounds, subject to appropriate confidentiality safeguards.
Less commonly, we may process this type of information where it is needed in relation to legal claims or to protect your interests and you are not capable of giving consent, or where you may already have made the information public. Such information can also be processed in the course of legitimate business activities with appropriate safeguards.
In particular, we will use special category information about you as follows:-
– We will use information about 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 race or national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, or your sexual orientation to
ensure meaningful equal opportunities monitoring and reporting.
5) How will we share the information we collect from you?
We may pass on your personal information:
– If we have a legal obligation to do so;
– If we have to enforce or apply any terms or conditions of employment;
– So that our key suppliers can perform their functions; and / or
– For other legitimate business reasons.
This may include, but is not limited to sharing your information with the following third parties:
– HMRC
– Recruitment Agencies
– Pension and Insurance Scheme Providers and other benefit scheme providers
– Background Checks Suppliers
– Legal Advisers
– Law Enforcement Agencies
– Regulatory Bodies such as the Financial Conduct Authority or Information Commissioner’s Office.
– External contractors or suppliers.
– Potential purchases of some or all of the business or on a re-structuring.
We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to act lawfully when processing it. All our third-party service providers 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.
6) Where Your Data is Stored
Specialist Lending Limited stores your data on secure servers in the European Economic Area (EEA) and data may also be held by clients, third party agencies, service providers, representatives and agents as outlined above. (Some of our suppliers are based outside the EEA. We have strict controls over how and why your data can be accessed).
7) Keeping your data secure
Specialist Lending Limited takes data security very seriously and we have rigorous controls in place to ensure that any information we hold on you is held securely. Data is encrypted where appropriate to ensure it remains secure.
However, sending information over the internet is generally not completely secure, and we cannot guarantee the security of your data while it is in transit. Any data you send is at your own risk. We have procedures and security features in place to keep your data secure once we receive it.
8) Data Retention Periods
We will only retain your personal information for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, 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 the 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.
9) Your rights
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which took effect on 25th May 2018, and the Data Protection Act 2018, provides the following rights to you as an individual:
The right to be informed – This Privacy Notice sets out details of how we will process your information fairly.
The right of access – You have the right to access your personal data and supplementary information.
The right to rectification – You have the right to have personal data rectified if it is inaccurate or incomplete.
The right to erasure – You have the right to have your personal information deleted where there is no compelling reason for its continued processing.
The right to restrict processing – You have the right to block or suppress the processing of your personal data. This means that Specialist Lending Limited is permitted to store the personal data it holds but not further process it.
The right to data portability – You have the right to move, copy or easily transfer your personal data from one IT environment to another in a safe and secure way, without hindrance to usability. In this event Specialist Lending Limited will provide your personal data to you in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable form.
The right to object – You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data:
– based on legitimate interests or the performance of a task in the public interest / exercise of official duty;
– direct marketing
– processing for the purpose of scientific / historical research and statistics
10) Your Right to Complain
If you are dissatisfied with the way in which Specialist Lending Limited has processed your personal data or you believe that Specialist Lending Limited has breached personal data regulations, you have the right to refer your complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Details can be found on the ICO website (https://ico.org.uk/concerns/).
However, we would first hope that our Data Protection Officer can resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information and would recommend you contact them in the first instance.
