How we use information about employees

What is personal data?

Your personal data is information that identifies you, such as your date of birth or your address. It can also be information that reveals something about you, for example your self-declared ethnicity or sexuality, your opinions, or information about your health.

We will respect your privacy and your rights. We will only process information about you when there is a legitimate need or legal requirement to do so.

How we use your information

In order to play our part in creating a world without dementia, we must be excellent in all we do. That excellence depends on our people, and we need to recruit and retain the right people to make sure we meet our strategic vision.

To register your interest in roles and as part of a recruitment exercise

When you sign up for job alerts, with your consent we will hold information about the kind of roles you are interested in and will contact you when relevant roles are advertised. Through your recruitment account, you can let us know at any time if you no longer want to receive these emails or want to change your preferences.

When you apply for a role, we will use the information you provide us with as part of the recruitment process. We do this to make sure your skills and experience match those necessary for the role. Without this information, we will not be able to assess your suitability for the role and so may not recruit you into the position you would like to have.

Please note: Your online application form will be used to shortlist against the criteria. If you add your image and additional information to your candidate record page, this will not be used towards selection decisions.

To fulfill our part of your employment contract

As part of your contract of employment, we need to process information about you.

This could be for:

• Contractual reasons (for example, deducting tax and national insurance contributions so that you are paid the correct amount, or processing annual leave requests)
• Us to meet our legal obligations (for example, auto-enrolling you in a pension scheme, or undertaking Criminal Records checks where necessary)
• Us to meet our legitimate interests in ensuring we have an effective and efficient workforce (for example, providing our reward package, reviewing your performance, or delivering development and engagement opportunities).

Where it is necessary for us to use your personal information to fulfil agreements made in your contract of employment or the processing is necessary to fulfil a legal obligation, we must process your information. If we weren’t able to process your personal information, we would not meet our contractual obligations towards you as an employer or our legal obligations.

To analyse the impact of our policies and practices

As a charity, it’s really important to us that we spend our money, resources and time effectively and efficiently. For that reason, we may analyse the details you provide us with to ensure our policies and practices are appropriate and fit for purpose for our current workforce and we deliver excellence in our working environment. Examples of reasons we may use your information in analysis exercises include:

• To understand people apply to work for us and to improve our future recruitment
• To help us develop effective ways of reducing sickness absence and supporting our employees to return to a safe place of work.
• To analyse and monitor our performance against equality, diversity and inclusiveness commitments to make sure our workforce reflects the communities we represent.

Every year, we ask all of our people (employees and volunteers) to take part in an engagement survey. Participation is completely voluntary. It enables us to know what we are doing well, but equally what you feel we could be doing better. This will help us to provide the best employment experience possible.

Sharing your information

We do not sell your information to other charities or organisations.

The information you provide as part of the recruitment process will only be shared with those involved in the process. If you are successful, the information you provide will form the basis of your personnel file and will be shared with your manager.

For employment we sometimes share information with external agencies or suppliers to help us provide you with a fulfilling employment experience. This could be with our pension provider, occupational health partner or rewards provider. We have undertaken due diligence on these organisations and have entered into contracts that require them only to process your information for agreed purposes and to do so in a safe manner. The information we share is limited and relevant.

Similarly, sometimes we share information about you with third parties so that you can undertake your role or take part in development opportunities (for example, when booking travel or arranging hotel rooms for management conferences). Again, we will only share limited and relevant information. Through contractual arrangements, we will ensure that information provided will only be used for agreed purposes and that the third party will protect your information.

If you are employed to deliver a service which is funded by a public commissioning body, we may be required to share information with them. For example, we may be contractually obliged to demonstrate that we are running services which are representative of the communities we serve. This will normally be in the form of anonymised information, but where necessary and required we may share limited personal information. We will inform you when this is the case. We will also need to share limited personal information in TUPE situations to enable your continued employment with a new service provider.

We may need to share information with government agencies when we have a legal obligation to do so (for example, with HMRC for tax purposes).

In response to an employment reference request, we will confirm factual information about your employment with us.

We will not share your information with any other organisations, other than:

• If we are required to by law, for example with the police if we agree it is essential to the prevention or detection of a crime
• If we feel it is in the vital interests of yourself or another person, for example in a medical emergency
• If we have your consent to share information with them (such as in response to a housing reference request, or so you can receive a specific employment reward such as our Cash Health Plan or Society Plus discounts).

We believe making a difference to people living with or affected by dementia should be acknowledged and rewarded.

We nominate people for awards or honours where they have made a significant difference and we may share relevant information about them with bodies and organisations to support the nomination.

For some external awards or honours the nominating organisation is asked not to inform the person being nominated.

Receiving information from third parties

We will only receive information from third parties about you:

• As a result of seeking references from people you nominated to be your referees
• In response to a criminal records check (undertaken with your permission)
• If you apply for a benefit scheme which requires payments to be taken from your pay (such as a season ticket loan)
• From our occupational health provider (only after obtaining your written consent).

When this is the case, or in any unique circumstance not covered by the list above, we will make sure you know this has happened and explain what kind of information the third party has given to us.

Keeping your information

We have a robust schedule for securely holding and disposing of employee information. We only keep your information for as long as it is needed and then dispose of it securely. The length of time depends on the purpose we were collecting and using it for.

For example, if you apply for a role but are unsuccessful, your information will be kept for six months after the end of the recruitment process.

If you are successful in an application, the records we keep of your interaction with us as an employee will be kept for six years after the end of your employment. Some information is not kept in our people database (for example, work-station assessment forms) and this will be kept for less time. Once the business need to keep information has passed, we will either dispose of it or anonymise the information so that you cannot be identified any more.

Information which is held to process job alerts is kept for 12 months. After this time we’ll ask if you want to keep receiving them. If you wish them to stop then, or sooner, we will dispose of your information.

Where is your information held?

We hold most information on our central IT system which meets international security standards. Some information may be kept in a paper record, but where possible this will be transferred to an electronic record and we will securely dispose of the paper version.

Sometimes we use other organisations to help us operate and they may hold information outside the UK. When this is the case we make sure that your rights are protected.

Security and confidentiality

We take care to make sure your information is secure when we use, store and transmit it. It is only accessed by people who have been verified and authorised to do so. Every one of us who has access to your personal information is obliged to respect that it is confidential and we deliver training to make sure this happens.

Your consent

If we are using your data on the basis of your agreement then at any time, you can withdraw your consent and we will stop using it.

Further rights

Please contact us at any time you want to:

• See what information we hold on you
• Request a portable copy of your information
• Ask for corrections to be made
• Ask us to stop using your information in any way.

We’ll do our best to respect your wishes.

How to contact us

If you have any questions about how we are using your information please contact us:

• by phone to Customer Care on 0330 333 0804
• in writing to Customer Care, Alzheimer's Society, Suite 2, 1st Floor East Wing, Plumer House, Tailyour Road, Plymouth, PL6 5DH
• by email to [email protected]

You can also use the online form for general enquiries.

For a copy of your personal information, to ask us to correct the information we hold about you or to stop using your information, please contact the Information Governance team at:

Information Governance Team,
Alzheimer's Society
Suite 2
1st Floor East Wing
Plumer House
Tailyour Road
Plymouth
PL6 5DH

You can also email our team at [email protected]

Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we are processing your information please contact us using the details outlined above. If you are still unhappy after receiving our response, you can raise your concern with the Information Commissioner’s Office.

If you live outside the UK in Guernsey, please contact Guernsey Data Protection Authority, or if you live in the Isle of Man, please contact Isle of Man Information Commissioner.