Employee privacy notice

Good Things Foundation collects and processes personal data relating its employees to manage the employment relationship. We are committed to being transparent about how we collect and use that data and to meeting our data protection obligations.

What information does the organisation collect?

The organisation collects and processes a range of information about you. This includes 

• Name, address, date of birth, gender and contact details, including email address and telephone number;
• Terms and conditions of your employment;
• Details of your qualifications, skills, experience and employment history, including start and end dates with previous employers;
• Information about your remuneration, including entitlement to benefits such as pensions or insurance cover;
• Details of your bank account and national insurance number;
• Your marital status, next of kin, dependants and emergency contacts;
• Your nationality and entitlement to work in the UK;
• Your criminal record (where appropriate);
• Your days of work, working hours and attendance at work;
• Your periods of leave, including holiday, sickness absence, family leave and sabbaticals, and the reasons for the leave;
• Any disciplinary or grievance procedures in which you have been involved, including warnings issued to you and related correspondence;
• Assessments of your performance, including appraisals, performance reviews and ratings, performance improvement plans and related correspondence;
• Your medical or health conditions, including any disability for which the organisation needs to make reasonable adjustments; and
• Equal opportunities monitoring information, including your ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health and religion or belief (though this is collected and held anonymously for data processing purposes it is requested from you).

The organisation will collect this information in a variety of ways, including:

• application forms, CVs or resumes; 
• from your passport or other identity documents such as your driving licence; 
• from forms completed by you at the start of or during employment (such as benefit nomination forms); 
• from correspondence with you; 
• through interviews, meetings or other assessments.

The organisation will collect personal data about you from third parties, such as 

• references supplied by former employers, 
• information from employment background check providers, 
• information from credit reference agencies and 
• information from criminal records checks permitted by law.

Data will be stored in a range of different places, including 

• in your personnel file, 
• in the organisation’s HR management systems and 
• in other IT systems (including the organisation’s email system).

Why does the organisation process personal data?

The organisation 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 benefit, pension and insurance entitlements.

In some cases, the organisation 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.

In other cases, the organisation 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 and promotion 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 employee performance and related processes, to plan for career development, and for succession planning and workforce management purposes;
• 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).

Where the organisation 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 may be held and shared internally where necessary, including with members of the HR and recruitment team (including payroll), your line manager, managers in the business area in which you work and IT staff if access to the data is necessary for performance of their roles.

The organisation shares your data with third parties where necessary in order to obtain pre-employment references from other employers, obtain employment background checks from third-party providers and obtain necessary criminal records checks from the Disclosure and Barring Service. The organisation may also share your data with third parties in the context of a sale of some or all of its business. In those circumstances the data will be subject to confidentiality arrangements.

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

The organisation may transfer your data outside of the European Economic Area. This would take place if you were to work within our Australia division of the business. We have taken steps to ensure that our Australian division is compliant with the General Data Protection Requirements.

How does the organisation protect data?

The organisation takes the security of your data seriously. The organisation 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.

For how long does the organisation keep data?

The organisation will hold your personal data for the entirety of the period of your employment contract. The period for which your data is held after the end of employment are: 

• Natural HR account – 6 years, after which all information is deleted
• Paper file – all relevant documents not already on Natural HR will be uploaded and kept for 6 years
• Computer file – all relevant documents not already on Natural HR will be uploaded and kept for 6 years
• Emails – any containing personal data will be destroyed when an individual leaves

Keeping your personal data for 6 years is in line with the period of time we are required to keep accounts for the organisation and information regarding your employment is associated with the accounts.  It also allows us to provide reference information for you, with your consent, if requested by future employers.

Your rights

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

• Access and obtain a copy of your data on request;
• Require the organisation to change incorrect or incomplete data;
• Require the organisation to delete or stop processing your data, for example where the data is no longer necessary for the purposes of processing; and
• Object to the processing of your data where the organisation is relying on its legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact Human Resources, Good Things Foundation, PO Box 6063, Sheffield, S11 0GU, tel: 0114 349 1666.

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

What if you do not provide personal data?

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

Automated decision-making

Employment decisions are not based on automated decision-making. If you are asked to complete information online for example as part of an internal selection exercise requiring an application form, psychometric or skills test, the results will always be looked at by a person prior to any decision being made. All employment processes where trigger points are involved, such as sickness absence, will involve discussion with an individual and are not part of an automated process. 

Changes to our policy

We may make changes to our policy from time to time.
This policy was last reviewed: February 2022