All organisations that process personal data are required to comply with data protection legislation. This includes in particular the Data Protection Act 1998 (or its successor) and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (together the ‘Data Protection Laws’). The Data Protection Laws give individuals (known as ‘data subjects’) certain rights over their personal data whilst imposing certain obligations on the organisations that process their data.
As a recruitment business the Company collects and processes both personal data and sensitive personal data. It is required to do so to comply with other legislation. It is also required to keep this data for different periods depending on the nature of the data.
This policy sets out how the Company implements the Data Protection Laws. It should be read in conjunction with the Data Protection Procedure.
DEFINITIONS
In this policy the following terms have the following meanings:
- ‘consent’ means any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of an individual’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of persona data relating to him or her;
- ‘data controller’ means an individual or organisation which, alone or jointly with others, determines the purposes and means of the processing of personal data;
- ‘data processor’ means an individual or organisation which processes personal data on behalf of the data controller;
- ‘personal data’* means any information relating to an individual who can be identified, such as by a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person.
- ‘personal data breach’ means a breach of security leading to the accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of, or access to, personal data;
- ‘processing’ means any operation or set of operations performed on personal data, such as collection, recording, organisation, structuring, storage (including archiving), adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, restriction, erasure or destruction.
- ‘profiling’ means any form of automated processing of personal data consisting of the use of personal data to evaluate certain personal aspects relating to an individual, in particular to analyse or predict aspects concerning that natural person’s performance at work, economic situation, health, personal preferences, interests, reliability, behaviour, location or movements;
- ‘pseudonymisation’ means the processing of personal data in such a manner that the personal data can no longer be attributed to an individual without the use of additional information, provided that such additional information is kept separately and is subject to technical and organisational measures to ensure that the personal data are not attributed to an identified or identifiable individual;
- ‘sensitive personal data’* means personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data, data concerning health, an individual’s sex life or sexual orientation and an individual’s criminal convictions.
- * For the purposes of this policy we use the term ‘personal data’ to include ‘sensitive personal data’ except where we specifically need to refer to sensitive personal data.
- ‘Supervisory authority’ means an independent public authority which is responsible for monitoring the application of data protection.
All of these definitions are italicized throughout this policy to remind the reader that they are defined terms.
