WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS DOCUMENT?
The Symphony Group plc is a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. You are being sent a copy of this privacy notice because you are applying for work with us. It tells you how and why your personal data will be used, namely for the purposes of the recruitment exercise, and how long it will usually be retained for. It provides you with certain information that must be provided under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
DATA PROTECTION PRINCIPLES
- Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
- Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
- Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
- Accurate and kept up to date.
- Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
- Kept securely.
WHAT KIND OF INFORMATION WILL WE HOLD ABOUT YOU?
In connection with your application for work with us, we will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you that you have provided:
- Your curriculum vitae and covering letter.
- The information on our application form, including name, address, telephone number, personal email address, gender, employment history and qualifications.
- Any information you provide to us during an interview.
- Psychometric test results.
We may also collect, store and use the following “special categories” of more sensitive personal information:
- Information about your race or ethnicity
- Information about any disability that you may have.
HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION COLLECTED?
We collect personal information about candidates from the following sources:
- You, the candidate.
- Recruitment agencies, from which we collect the following categories of data: name, address, telephone number, personal email address, qualifications, employment history.
- Your named referees, from whom we collect the following categories of data: information about performance and employment history as well as health and disciplinary procedures, if relevant.
HOW WILL WE USE INFORMATION ABOUT YOU?
We will use the personal information we collect about you to:
- Assess your skills, qualifications, and suitability for the role.
- Communicate with you about the recruitment process.
- Keep records related to our hiring processes.
- Comply with legal or regulatory requirements.
It is in our legitimate interests to decide whether to appoint you to the role for which you have applied. Appointing someone to that role would be beneficial to our business.
We also need to process your personal information as part of the recruitment process during which we will decide whether to enter into a contract of employment with you.
If you fail to provide information when requested, which is necessary for us to consider your application (such as evidence of qualifications or work history), we will not be able to process your application successfully.
HOW WILL WE USE PARTICULARLY SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION?
Some of your personal data is considered to be particularly sensitive. We will only use that information in the following ways:
- We will use information about your disability status to consider whether we need to provide appropriate adjustments during the recruitment process.
AUTOMATED DECISION-MAKING
You will not be subject to decisions that will have a significant impact on you based solely on automated decision-making.
HOW WILL WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION SAFE?
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 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.
HOW LONG WILL WE USE YOUR INFORMATION FOR?
We will keep your personal information for a period of 12 months after we have communicated to you our decision about whether to appoint you. We retain your personal information for that period so that we can show, in the event of a legal claim, that we have not discriminated against candidates on prohibited grounds and that we have conducted the recruitment exercise in a fair and transparent way. After this period, we will securely destroy your personal information in accordance with our data retention policy.
If we wish to keep your personal information on file, on the basis that a further opportunity could come up in the future and we may wish to consider you for that, we will write to you separately, seeking your explicit consent to retain your personal information for a fixed period on that basis.
WHAT RIGHTS DO YOU HAVE?
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 and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground.
- 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 the Human Resources Department in writing.
WHO CAN YOU CONTACT ABOUT YOUR INFORMATION?
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 at dpo@symphony-group.co.uk. 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.
