Search Laboratory Limited is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information. 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.
Search Laboratory Limited is a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are required under data protection legislation to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.
This notice applies to current and former employees, job applicants, workers and contractors. This notice does not form part of any contract of employment or other contract to provide services. We may update this notice at any time but if we do so, we will provide you with an updated copy of this notice as soon as reasonably practical.
It is important that you read and retain this notice, together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information and what your rights are under the data protection legislation.
We will comply with data protection law. This says 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. |
Personal data, or 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).
There are certain types of more sensitive personal data which require a higher level of protection, such as information about a person’s health or sexual orientation. Information about criminal convictions also warrants this higher level of protection. |
We will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:
We may also collect, store and use the following more sensitive types of personal information:
We collect personal information about employees, workers and contactors through the application and recruitment process, either directly from candidates or sometimes from an employment agency or background check provider. We may sometimes collect additional information from third parties including former employers, credit reference agencies or other background check agencies.
We will collect additional personal information in the course of job-related activities throughout the period of you working for us.
We 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. 2. Where we need to comply with a legal obligation. 3. Where it is necessary for legitimate interests pursued by us or a third party and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. 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 or for official purposes. |
We need all the categories of information in the list above primarily to allow us to perform our contract with you and to enable us to comply with legal obligations. In some cases we may use your personal information to pursue legitimate interests, provided your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we 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).
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.
Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
How we use particularly sensitive personal information
“Special categories” of particularly sensitive personal information, such as information about your health, racial or ethnic origin, sexual orientation or trade union membership, require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal information. We have in place an appropriate policy document and safeguards which we are required by law to maintain when processing such data. We may process special categories of personal information 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. |
In general, we will not process particularly sensitive personal information about you unless it is necessary for performing or exercising obligations or rights in connection with employment. On rare occasions, there may be other reasons for processing, such as it is in the public interest to do so. The situations in which we will process your particularly sensitive personal information are listed below.
We do not need your consent if we use special categories of your personal information in accordance with our written policy to carry out our legal obligations or exercise specific rights in the field of employment law. In limited circumstances, we may approach you for your written consent to allow us to process certain particularly sensitive data. If we do so, we will provide you with full details of the information that we would like and the reason we need it, so that you can carefully consider whether you wish to consent. You should be aware that it is not a condition of your contract with us that you agree to any request for consent from us.
We 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 obligations and provided we do so in line with our data protection policy. |
We envisage that we will hold information about criminal convictions.
We will only collect information about criminal convictions if it is appropriate given the nature of the role and where we are legally able to do so.
We may have to share your data with third parties, including third-party service providers and other entities in the group.
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. |
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.
“Third parties” includes third-party service providers (including contractors, our advisors and designated agents) and other entities within our group. The following activities are carried out by third-party service providers: legal/tax advice, pension administration, benefits provision and administration and our candidate management system.
We will share personal data regarding your participation in any pension arrangement operated by a group company with the trustees or scheme managers of the arrangement in connection with the administration of the arrangements.
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.
We will share your personal information with other entities in our group as part of our regular reporting activities on company performance, in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise, for system maintenance support and hosting of data.
We may share your personal information with other third parties, for example in the context of the possible sale or restructuring of the business. In this situation we will, so far as possible, share anonymised data with the other parties before the transaction completes. Once the transaction is completed, we will share your personal data with the other parties if and to the extent required under the terms of the transaction.
We may also need to share your personal information with a regulator or to otherwise comply with the law. This may include making returns to HMRC and disclosures to shareholders such as directors’ remuneration reporting requirements.
Your personal data may be processed by our group companies or service providers (or other third parties) located outside the UK/European Economic Area (“EEA”) for the purposes set out in this privacy notice. Where your data is transferred outside the UK/EEA, we will ensure that adequate safeguards are in place, such as:
(a) the transfer is to a country which is the subject of an adequacy-decision by the European Commission;
(b) the transfer is covered by a contractual agreement which has been approved by the European Commission as providing adequate safeguards for personal data transferred outside the UK/EEA, such as the EU Standard Contractual Clauses;
For further information (including how to obtain a copy of any safeguards used) please contact HR/our Data Protection Officer.
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.
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. 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 your personal 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. Once you are no longer an employee, worker or contractor of the company we will retain and securely destroy your personal information in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.
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.
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
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 HR in writing.
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.
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.
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 HR/our Data Protection Officer. 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 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.
Changes to this privacy notice
We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.