Data Controller (“the Company”): Acorn Synergie UK Ltd (incorporating Acorn Recruitment Ltd and Acorn Rail Ltd)
Introduction
The Company collects and processes personal information, or personal data, relating to its employees, workers, contractors & job applicants to manage the recruitment process and working relationship; where the recruitment process results in employment or engagement. This personal information may be held by the Company on paper or in electronic format.
The Company is committed to being transparent about how it handles your personal information, to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information and to meeting its data protection obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and the Data Protection Act 2018. The purpose of this privacy notice is to make you aware of how and why we will collect and use your personal information both during and after your working relationship with the Company. We are required under the GDPR to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.
This privacy notice applies to all current and former employees, workers, contractors & job applicants. It is non-contractual and does not form part of any employment contract, temporary worker agreement, consultancy agreement or any other contract for services.
Data protection principles
Under the GDPR, there are six data protection principles that the Company must comply with. These provide that the personal information we hold about you must be:
The Company is responsible for, and must be able to demonstrate compliance with, these principles. This is called accountability.
What types of personal information do we collect about you?
Personal information is any information about an individual from which that person can be directly or indirectly identified. It doesn’t include anonymised data, i.e. where all identifying particulars have been removed. There are also “special categories” of personal information, and personal information on criminal convictions and offences, which requires a higher level of protection because it is of a more sensitive nature. The special categories of personal information comprise information about an individual’s racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, health, sex life or sexual orientation and genetic and biometric data.
The Company collects, uses and processes a range of personal information about you. This includes (as applicable):
The Company may also collect, use and process the following special categories of your personal information (as applicable):
How do we collect your personal information?
The Company may collect personal information about employees, workers, contractors & job applicants in a variety of ways. It is collected during the recruitment process, either directly from you or sometimes from a third party. We may also collect personal information from other external third parties, such as references from former employers, information from background check providers, information from credit reference agencies and criminal record checks from the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS).
We will also collect additional personal information throughout the period of your working relationship with us. This may be collected in the course of your work-related activities. Whilst some of the personal information you provide to us is mandatory and/or is a statutory or contractual requirement, some of it you may be asked to provide to us on a voluntary basis. We will inform you whether you are required to provide certain personal information to us or if you have a choice in this.
Your personal information may be stored in different places, including in your personnel file, in the Company's HR management system, recruitment database and in other IT systems, such as the e-mail system.
Why and how do we use your personal information?
We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. These are known as the legal bases for processing. We will use your personal information in one or more of the following circumstances:
We may also occasionally use your personal information where we need to protect your vital interests (or someone else’s vital interests).
We need all the types of personal information listed under “What types of personal information do we collect about you?” primarily to enable us to perform our contract with you and to enable us to comply with our legal obligations. In some cases, we may also use your personal information where it is necessary to pursue our legitimate interests (or those of a third party), provided that your interests or your fundamental rights and freedoms do not override our interests. Our legitimate interests include: performing or exercising our obligations or rights under the direct relationship that exists between the Company and you as its employee, workers contractor or job applicant; pursuing our business by employing (and rewarding) employees, workers, contractors & job applicants; performing effective internal administration and ensuring the smooth running of the business; ensuring the security and effective operation of our systems and network; protecting our confidential information; and conducting due diligence on employees, workers, contractors & job applicants. We believe that you have a reasonable expectation, as our employee, worker, contractor or job applicant that we will process your personal information.
The purposes for which we are processing, or will process, your personal information include:
Please note that we may process your personal information without your consent, in compliance with these rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
What if you fail to provide personal information?
If you fail to provide certain personal information when requested or required, we may not be able to perform the contract we have entered into with you, or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations. You may also be unable to exercise your statutory or contractual rights.
Why and how do we use your sensitive personal information?
We will only collect and use your sensitive personal information, which includes special categories of personal information and information about criminal convictions and offences, when the law additionally allows us to.
Some special categories of personal information, i.e. information about your health or medical conditions and trade union membership, and information about criminal convictions and offences, is also processed so that we can perform or exercise our obligations or rights under employment law or social security law and in line with our data protection policy.
We may also process these special categories of personal information, and information about any criminal convictions and offences, where we have your explicit written consent. In this case, we will first provide you with full details of the personal information we would like and the reason we need it, so that you can properly consider whether you wish to consent or not. It is entirely your choice whether to consent. Your consent can be withdrawn at any time.
The purposes for which we are processing, or will process, these special categories of your personal information, and information about any criminal convictions and offences, are to:
Where the Company processes other special categories of personal information, i.e. information about your racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical beliefs and sexual orientation, this is done only for the purpose of equal opportunities monitoring and in line with our data protection policy. Personal information that the Company uses for these purposes is either anonymised or is collected with your explicit written consent, which can be withdrawn at any time. It is entirely your choice whether to provide such personal information.
We may also occasionally use your special categories of personal information, and information about any criminal convictions and offences, where it is needed for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.
Change of purpose
We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it. If we need to use your personal information for a purpose other than that for which it was collected, we will provide you, prior to that further processing, with information about the new purpose, we will explain the legal basis which allows us to process your personal information for the new purpose and we will provide you with any relevant further information. We may also issue a new privacy notice to you.
Who has access to your personal information?
Your personal information may be shared internally within the Company and the Group, including with members of the HR department, payroll staff, your line manager, other managers in the department in which you work and IT staff if access to your personal information is necessary for the performance of their roles.
The Company may also share your personal information with third-party service providers (and their designated agents), including:
The Company may also share your personal information with other third parties in the context of a potential sale or restructuring of some or all of its business. In those circumstances, your personal information will be subject to confidentiality undertakings.
We may share your personal information with third parties where it is necessary to administer the contract we have entered into with you, where we need to comply with a legal obligation, or where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party).
How does the Company protect your personal information?
The Company has put in place measures to protect the security of your personal information. It has internal policies, procedures and controls in place to try and prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost or destroyed, altered, disclosed or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, workers, contractors & job applicants and other third parties who have a business need to know in order to perform their job duties and responsibilities.
Where your personal information is shared with third-party service providers, we require all third parties to take appropriate technical and organisational security measures to protect your personal information and to treat it subject to a duty of confidentiality and in accordance with data protection law. We only allow them to process your personal information for specified purposes and in accordance with our written instructions and we do not allow them to use your personal information for their own purposes.
The Company also has in place procedures to deal with a suspected data security breach and we will notify the Information Commissioner’s Office (or any other applicable supervisory authority or regulator) and you of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.
For how long does the Company keep your personal information?
The Company will only retain your personal information for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected and processed, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, tax, health and safety, reporting or accounting requirements.
The Company will generally hold your personal information for the duration of your employment or engagement. The exceptions are:
Once you have left employment or your engagement has been terminated, we will generally hold your personal information for one year after the termination of your employment or engagement, but this is subject to: (a) any minimum statutory or other legal, tax, health and safety, reporting or accounting requirements for particular data or records, and (b) the retention of some types of personal information for up to six years to protect against legal risk, e.g. if they could be relevant to a possible legal claim in a tribunal, County Court or High Court. We will hold payroll, wage and tax records (including salary, bonuses, overtime, expenses, benefits and pension information, National Insurance number, PAYE records, tax code and tax status information) for six years after the termination of your employment or engagement. Overall, this means that we will reduce the file of personal information that we hold on you one year after the termination of your employment or engagement, so that we only continue to retain for a longer period what is strictly necessary.
Personal information which is no longer to be retained will be securely and effectively destroyed or permanently erased from our IT systems and we will also require third parties to destroy or erase such personal information where applicable.
In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it no longer permits your identification. In this case, we may retain such information for a longer period.
Your rights in connection with your personal information
It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and up to date. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes, e.g. you change your home address, during your working relationship with the Company so that our records can be updated. The Company cannot be held responsible for any errors in your personal information in this regard unless you have notified the Company of the relevant change.
As a data subject, you have a number of statutory rights. Subject to certain conditions, and in certain circumstances, you have the right to:
If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please complete the electronic form on the Company’s website. We may need to request specific information from you in order to verify your identity and check your right to access the personal information or to exercise any of your other rights. This is a security measure to ensure that your personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.
In the limited circumstances where you have provided your consent to the processing of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. This will not, however, affect the lawfulness of processing based on your consent before its withdrawal. If you wish to withdraw your consent, please complete the electronic form on the Company’s website. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your personal information for the purpose you originally agreed to, unless we have another legal basis for processing.
Transferring personal information outside the European Economic Area
The Company may transfer only the information you provide to us to countries outside the European Economic Area (‘EEA’) for the purposes of providing you with work-finding services. We will take steps to ensure adequate protections are in place to ensure the security of your information. The EEA comprises the EU member states plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
Automated decision making
Automated decision making occurs when an electronic system uses your personal information to make a decision without human intervention.
We do not envisage that any employment decisions will be taken about you based solely on automated decision making, including profiling. However, we will notify you in writing if this position changes.
Changes to this Privacy Notice
The Company reserves the right to update or amend this privacy notice at any time, including where the Company intends to further process your personal information for a purpose other than that for which the personal information was collected or where we intend to process new types of personal information. We will issue you with a new privacy notice when we make significant updates or amendments. We may also notify you about the processing of your personal information in other ways.