Employee and Job Candidate Privacy Notice
What is the purpose of this document?
Ellipses Pharma Limited (“Ellipses”, “we”, “our” and “us”) is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information.
This privacy notice describes how and why we collect and use personal information about you when you apply for a job with us, and during and after your working relationship with us, in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.
It applies to all our job candidates, employees, agency staff, contractors, interns and former employees.
Ellipses is a "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 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 make any material changes to it, 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 to you 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. This privacy notice supplements these other notices provided by us and is not intended to override them.
Data protection principles
Under data protection law, the personal information we hold about you must be:
· 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.
The kind of information we hold about you
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified.
There are certain types of more sensitive personal data (sometimes called special categories of personal data) which require a higher level of protection. The special categories of personal data Ellipses may collect are listed below.
We will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:
· Personal and work contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, and personal and work email addresses.
· Date of birth and age.
· Gender.
· Marital status and dependants.
· Next of kin and emergency contact information.
· National Insurance number and/or other government identification numbers.
· Bank account details, payroll records and tax status information.
· Salary, annual leave entitlement, pension and benefits information.
· Attendance and non-attendance information, including holiday and sickness-related absence.
· Start date and, if different, the date of your continuous employment.
· Leaving date and your reason for leaving.
· Location of employment or workplace.
· Copy of driving licence and passport, where requested.
· Recruitment information, including:
o references and other information included in a CV or cover letter or as part of the application process, including any information you provide to us during an interview.
o if relevant, copies of right to work documentation and information from and for the Home Office regarding immigration/visas and your eligibility to work in the UK.
· Employment records (including job titles, role responsibilities, work and education history, working hours, holidays, training records and professional memberships).
· Compensation history.
· Work-related travel, expenses and reimbursement information.
· Performance/performance review information.
· Disciplinary and grievance information.
· CCTV footage and other information obtained through electronic means such as swipe card records.
· Information about your use of our information and communications equipment and systems.
· Photographs.
· In respect of contractors and agency staff, results of HMRC employment status check and details of your interest in and connection with the intermediary through which your services are supplied.
Where relevant to your relationship with Ellipses, we may also collect, store and use the following special categories of personal data:
· Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records, including:
o details of, and reasons for, any relevant workplace/working adjustments made in relation to your medical conditions;
o where you leave employment and the reason for leaving is determined to be ill-health, injury or disability, the records relating to that decision;
o details of any absences (other than holidays) from work including time on statutory parental leave and sick leave; and
o any health information needed in relation to your pension or for permanent health insurance purposes.
Please see further details in the “How we use particularly sensitive personal information” and “Do we need your consent?” sections below.
We also collect information about criminal allegations, offences and convictions, which must also be treated with additional care under the law (see further details in the “Information about criminal convictions” section below).
How is your personal information collected?
We collect personal information about job candidates, through the application and recruitment process, either directly from candidates or sometimes from an employment agency. We may sometimes collect additional information from third parties including former employers, credit reference agencies or other background check agencies and/or online sources.
We will collect additional personal information about our employees, agency staff, contactors and interns in the course of job-related activities throughout the period of you working for us. We also obtain some personal information from third party sources (e.g. HMRC).
How we will use information about you
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:
· Where we need to perform the contract we have entered into with you (or to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract).
· Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.
· Where it is necessary for legitimate interests pursued by us or a third party (related to the management and administration of our business) 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:
· Where we need to protect your life (or someone else's life).
· Where it is needed in the public interest.
Situations in which we will use your personal information
We use your personal information for the following purposes:
· to administer your application for a job with us and for other recruitment activities.
· to administer your employment contract, including to pay your salary and provide benefits to you, deal with any questions you have and support you in your career with us.
· to deliver our IT services and monitor the security of our systems, networks, applications and premises.
· in connection with your employment or engagement with us, including day to day management of your job with us and your activities and responsibilities.
· to manage, plan and deliver our global business strategy including potentially supporting the sale, transfer or merging of part or all of our business or assets, or in connection with the acquisition of another business.
· to comply with our legal obligations, including financial and taxation obligations.
If you fail to provide personal information
If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may not be able to process your job application, or 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 properly managing our business or providing certain services or benefits to you.
Change of purpose
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, 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:
· In limited circumstances, with your explicit written consent.
· Where we need to carry out our legal obligations or exercise rights in connection with employment law (e.g. to carry out background checks that are required by law).
· Where it is needed for occupational health reasons or to assess your working capacity (e.g. in relation to workplace adjustments required for your health).
· Where it is needed for reasons of substantial public interest, such as to prevent or detect unlawful activity 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 life (or someone else's life) and you are not capable of giving your consent, or where you have already deliberately made the information public.
Do we need your consent?
We do not need your consent where we have a lawful basis to use special categories of your personal information as set out above. However, 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.
Information about criminal convictions
We use information relating to criminal allegations, offences and convictions when we carry out background checks as part of our recruitment process or we may be notified of such information directly by you in the course of you working for us.
Automated decision-making
We do not envisage that any decisions will be taken about you using automated means, however we will notify you in writing if this position changes.
Data sharing
We may have to share your data with third parties, including third-party service providers. Details of these are given below.
Why might you share my personal information with third parties?
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.
Which third-party service providers process my personal information?
From time to time we may ask third parties (including contractors and designated agents) to carry out certain business functions for us. These third parties will process your personal data on our behalf (as our processors). The following activities are carried out by third-party service providers: payroll, IT services, training and communications and hospitality.
What about other third parties?
We may share your personal information with other third parties who will receive it as controllers of your personal data in their own right.
For example, we share your personal information with our pension administrators and benefits providers and administrators. Where required, we will share personal data relating to your participation in any share option plans operated by us with third party administrators, nominees, registrars and trustees for the purposes of administering the share option plans.
We may also need to share your personal information with a regulator, government bodies or to otherwise comply with the law. This may include making returns to HMRC, disclosures to stock exchange regulators and disclosures to shareholders such as directors' remuneration reporting requirements.
We may also share your personal data with professional bodies, consultants and our professional advisers, including legal advisers and accountants.
If we transfer, purchase, reorganise, merge or sell any part of our business or the business of a third party, we may disclose or transfer your personal data to the prospective seller, buyer or other third party involved in a business transfer, reorganisation or merger arrangement (and their advisors).
How secure is my information with third-party service providers and other entities in our group?
Our third-party service providers which act as our processors (processing your personal information on our behalf and on our instructions) are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow these 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.
Transferring information outside the UK
At present we do not envisage needing to transfer your personal information outside the UK for HR purposes.
Data security
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. We have also put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach. 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.
Data retention
How long will you use my information for?
We will only retain your personal information for a limited period of time as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for and to comply with your and our legal rights and obligations, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. This may mean that we keep some types of personal data for longer than others.
We will keep basic personal data about unsuccessful job candidates (name, contact details and outcome of application) for our record-keeping purposes and for cross-referencing against any future application to Ellipses that you may make.
However, with your consent, we will retain additional unsuccessful job candidates’
personal data for a period of one year from the date of your application in order to consider you for any future job opportunities with Ellipses.
Rights of access, correction, erasure, and restriction
Your duty to inform us of changes
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 the recruitment process or during your working relationship with us.
Your rights in connection with personal information
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 (or those of a third party) to use your personal details and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
· 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 you or another party.
If you want to access, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, restrict our processing of your personal data or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to you or another party, please contact the DPO in writing (contact details are given below).
No fee usually required
You will not normally 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.
What we may need from you
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.
Right to withdraw consent
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 the DPO (contact details below). 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. Your withdrawal of your consent won’t impact any of our processing up to the point that you withdraw your consent.
Data Protection Officer
We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) to oversee Ellipses’ compliance with data protection law, including with this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the DPO. Our current Data Protection Officer is Sarah Jackson who can be contacted at DPO@ellipses.life
If you have a complaint about how we have managed your personal information, we’d appreciate the opportunity to put things right. You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) with respect to data protection issues. More information can be found on the Information Commissioner’s Office website at https://ico.org.uk/
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.
If you have any questions about this privacy notice, please contact the DPO.