The law regarding Data Protection has changed. With the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018 employers have extra responsibilities when it comes to the processing of data about you.
Part of an employer’s obligation is to explain to staff (employees, workers and contractors), candidates and applicants what will happen to their data. This document is that explanation.
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE DOCUMENT?
| The Student Room Group Limited is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information. Personal Information is also known as ‘personal data’ when considering data protection issues.
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). It applies to all employees, workers and contractors and to any other individual (including candidates and applicants) to whom we may issue this notice. We may update this notice at any time. |
For data protection purposes The Student Room Group Limited is known as a “data controller”. This means that, as an employer, we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you.
- We are required by law to notify you of the information that is contained in this privacy notice.
The rules in this notice apply to current employees, workers, contractors, candidates and applicants. It will continue to apply and have effect even when you have left The Student Room Group Limited.
- This notice does not form part of any contract of employment or any other contract to provide personal services.
It is important that you read this notice, together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions from time to time, so that you are aware of how and why The Student Room Group Limited is using such information.
DATA PROTECTION ‘PRINCIPLES’
| The Student Room Group Limited must comply with data protection laws. These laws state 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; |
WHAT KIND OF INFORMATION DO WE/MAY WE HOLD ABOUT YOU?
| ‘Personal data’ (that being your 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, such as where no name is linked to the information recorded).
There are “special categories” of sensitive personal information (also known as ‘sensitive personal data’) which require a higher level of protection and these are mentioned further on. |
The Student Room Group Limited will collect, store and use the following categories of personal information about you:
- Personal contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers and personal email addresses that you have supplied;
- Your date of birth;
- Your gender;
- Your marital status and details of dependants;
- Next of kin details and emergency contact information;
- Your National Insurance number;
- Your bank account details, your payroll details/records and your tax details;
- Your salary, annual leave allowance information, pension and benefits information;
- Your start date and length of service;
- Your location of employment or workplace;
- A copy of your driving licence, where needed;
- Recruitment information about you (including copies of right to work documentation, (such as a passport) references and other information included in a CV or covering letter or as part of the application process);
- Your employment records with The Student Room Group Limited (including job titles, work history, working hours, training records, professional memberships and disciplinary and grievance materials);
- Performance review records;
- Security camera static images of you and other information obtained through electronic means such as swipe-card records and the like;
- Information recorded about your use of our information, technology, computer and communications systems.
- Psychometric test results
As stated, we may also collect, store and use the following “special categories” of more sensitive personal information (also known as ‘sensitive personal data’):
- Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and political opinions. This is typically retained for monitoring purposes or it might be disclosed in the context of grievance or disciplinary proceedings;
- Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records;
- Biometric data in the form of finger prints for electronic device access;
- Information about criminal convictions and offences. Such information is obtained via Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks.
HOW DO WE USE SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION?
| We may process special categories of personal information (‘sensitive personal information/data’) in the following circumstances:
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. 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. |
We will use your sensitive personal information/data in the following ways:
- We will use information relating to leaves 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 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;
You should be aware that it is not a condition of your contract that you consent to any form of processing.
HOW DO WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?
The Student Room Group Limited collects personal information about its employees, workers, contractors, candidates or applicants either directly during employment, hire or engagement or through its application and recruitment processes.
The information may be supplied directly from the individual employee, worker or contractor. Candidates also supply information directly but information about an individual may come from an employment agency or other background check provider.
We may sometimes collect additional information about employees, workers, contractors, candidates or applicants from third parties including their former employers/hirers, credit reference agencies or other background check agencies.
We will collect additional personal information about you in the course of job-related activities throughout the period of you working for us.
WHAT WILL WE DO WITH THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU?
| The Student Room Group Limited 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 (for example, your contract of employment); 2. Where we need to comply with a legal obligation (for example, to pay you your salary); 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. What is a legitimate interest will depend on the circumstances at the time. 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). 2. Where it is needed in the public interest. |
WHAT ARE THE SORT OF SITUATIONS IN WHICH YOU WILL USE MY PERSONAL INFORMATION?
The Student Room Group Limited needs all the categories of information in the list above (see What kind of information do we/may we hold about you?) for a number of purposes:
- To allow us to perform our contract with you;
- To enable us to comply with our legal obligations;
- In some cases, we may use your personal information to pursue The Student Room Group Limited’s ‘legitimate interests’, 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 or promotion/demotion;
- Determining the terms on which you work for The Student Room Group Limited;
- Checking you are legally entitled to work in the UK;
- Paying you and, as appropriate, deducting tax and National Insurance contributions;
- Providing you with relevant benefits, such as medical cover;
- Liaising with your pension provider;
- Administering and managing the contract that The Student Room Group Limited has 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 and decisions for the termination of the working relationship;
- Education, training and development requirements;
- Dealing with legal disputes involving you, or other employees, workers, contractors, candidates or applicants, including accidents at work;
- 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; and
- Equal opportunities monitoring.
Some of the above grounds for processing will overlap and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your personal information.
WHAT IF YOU FAIL OR REFUSE TO PROVIDE PERSONAL INFORMATION WHEN ASKED?
If you fail to provide certain information when requested, The Student Room Group Limited 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).
REASONS FOR PROCESSING PERSONAL INFORMATION
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.
Where this is required or permitted by law we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules.
INFORMATION ABOUT CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS
| The Student Room Group Limited 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 legal obligations or in connection with employment decisions and disciplinary proceedings, 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. |
SHARING YOUR DATA
| The Student Room Group Limited may have to share your data with third parties, including third-party service providers and other entities in the group. A classic example of this is sharing information with a payroll provider to process salary payments.
We will share your personal information with third parties where required by law, where it is necessary to administer the working relationship with you or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so. 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. |
HOW SECURE IS MY INFORMATION WITH THIRD-PARTY PROVIDERS?
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.
HOW SECURE IS MY DATA?
| We have put in place measures to protect the security of your information. Details of these measures are available upon request.
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 – HOW LONG WILL YOU USE MY INFORMATION FOR?
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.
Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal information are available in our retention policy which is available from Human Resources.
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 or candidate/applicant of The Student Room Group Limited we will retain and securely destroy your personal information in accordance with our applicable legal obligations.
RIGHTS OF ACCESS, CORRECTION, ERASURE AND RESTRICTION
Your 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.
Your 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 Human Resources in writing.
No fee usually required
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.
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 Human Resources. 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. [We should decide on which processing is based on consent and ensure, we obtain and records consents.]
DATA PROTECTION OFFICER
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.
- Email address: data.protection@thestudentroom.com
- Postal address:International House, Queens Road, Brighton, BN1 3XE
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 (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.
CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY
The Student Room Group Limited reserves the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we may provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any important 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 Human Resources (email: hr@thestudentroom.com).