Privacy Policy

WHO WE ARE – THE DATA CONTROLLER
‘We’ are SHS Group Limited, a company incorporated and registered in Northern Ireland with company number NI011256 whose registered office is at SHS House, 199 Airport Road West, Belfast, Co. Antrim, BT3 9ED.
We are the “Controller” for the purposes of data protection law. 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 work with us (whether as an employee, worker or contractor). It makes you aware of how and why your personal data will be used, the legal basis for processing your personal data and details of long it will usually be retained for. It provides you with certain information that must be provided under the General Data Protection Regulation ((EU) 2016/679) (GDPR).

DATA PROTECTION PRINCIPLES
We will comply with data protection law and principles, which means that your data will 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.

WHAT INFORMATION DO WE HOLD AND HOW DO WE OBTAIN IT?
Personal data means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. There are special categories of more sensitive personal data which require a higher level of protection, such as information about a person’s health or sexual orientation.
We may hold and use various types of personal data about you, including, for example, biographical details, recruitment information, details of your terms of employment, pay and
benefits details, CCTV footage, performance information, health and safety information, disciplinary and grievance matters, details of holiday and other leave, photographs, mobile telephone numbers, location information and information about your use of our information and communication systems.
We may also hold and use the following “special categories” of more sensitive personal information including information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records, genetic information and information about criminal convictions and offences.
We will only collect information about criminal convictions where the law allows us to do so.

OUR PURPOSE FOR COLLECTING DATA AND THE LEGAL GROUNDS
We hold and use personal data for employment, HR and business administration purposes for example your application form and references, your contract of employment and any amendments to it; correspondence with or about you, for example letters to you about a pay rise or, at your request, a letter to your mortgage company confirming your salary; information needed for payroll, benefits and expenses purposes; contact and emergency contact details; records of holiday; and records relating to your career history, such as training records, appraisals, other performance measures and, where appropriate, disciplinary and grievance records etc.
Data protection law specifies the legal grounds on which we can hold and use personal data. Most commonly, we rely on one or more of the following legal grounds when we process your personal data:

  • Your personal data will be processed because it is necessary in order to enter into or perform a contract with you (performance of the contract). This may include, for example, ensuring that we pay you correctly and that we provide you with the correct holiday entitlement.
  • Compliance with legal obligations – Your personal data will be processed on the basis that we need to process the data to comply with a legal obligation for example, to meet health and safety requirements, provide statutory holidays and to comply with limits on working time.
  • Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) provided your fundamental rights do not override those interests (legitimate interest). This may include, for example, managing working hours to ensure effective and efficient business operations, and monitoring your use of computers or other technology.

The sort of special category data that we hold and use includes: information relating to your health, which could include reasons for absence and GP reports and notes, equal opportunities monitoring data, biometric data and details of family leave which could include information about your health, religious beliefs, sexual life or sexual orientation. Information such as this may be used to manage absence and ensure cover, accommodate health conditions and consider how your health affects your ability to do your job and whether any adjustments to your job might be appropriate. We will also need this data to administer and manage statutory and company sick pay, and health insurance.
Since special category data is usually more sensitive than most ordinary personal data, we are required to have an additional legal ground to process it. Most commonly, in addition to at least one of the legal grounds above, we rely on one or more of the following grounds to process your special category data:

  • Where we need to exercise our legal rights to carry out our legal obligations in relation to employment or social security (obligations / right in relation to employment).
  • Where it is needed in the public interest, such as for equal opportunities monitoring (public interest in monitoring equal opportunities within the workforce).
  • Where it is needed to assess your working capacity on health grounds, subject to appropriate confidentiality safeguards (assessment of working capacity).

Occasionally, we may also hold and use ordinary personal data: in the public interest for the detection or prevention of crime; or where needed to protect your vital interest or those of another person. We may also occasionally hold and use special category data: to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim; where needed to protect your interests (or someone else’s interest) where you are not capable of giving your consent; or where you have already made the information public.
Sometimes we may use your personal data for purposes that are different from or incompatible with those for which we collected it. If we do this, we will notify you and explain our legal ground for using your data in this way, as required under data protection law.

YOUR RIGHTS
You have fundamental rights over your personal data. These are explained in detail in the Information Commissioners Website and we are committed to making it as simple as possible for you to exercise them.

  • 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) 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 another party.

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 consent, please contact the Data Compliance Manager. 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.

DO WE NEED YOUR CONSENT TO PROCESS PERSONAL DATA?
We do not need your consent if we use your personal information to carry out our legal obligations, legitimate interests or exercise specific rights in the field of employment law as outlined above. In limited circumstances, we may approach you for 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 consider whether you wish to consent. You should be aware that providing the requested information is not a condition of your contract.

DATA SECURITY
To protect your data we have put in place security precautions which include but are not limited to:

  • Physical and administrative security measures at our offices
  • Firewalls and continuously updated anti-virus programmes
  • Encrypted storage

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.

Our Company data is stored in the following locations:

  • On servers in our office in the United Kingdom
  • Across several sites connected by a secure communications system
  • By a secure cloud storage provider with data centres based in the EU
  • Locked filing cabinets

DATA SHARING AND TRANSFERRING
For the purposes of GDPR, we are resident in the United Kingdom and regulated by the Information Commissioner’s Office. We do not carry out any data processing outside of the EEA; if that changes, we will inform you.
We will only share your personal data with third parties where we have an appropriate legal grounds under data protection law which permits us to do so. Where we transfer any data to a third party we have put in place all necessary controls to ensure the protection of privacy.
Other third parties include, for example, disclosure to:

  • payroll providers
  • background check agencies, and/or government agencies for the purpose of complying with mandatory reporting requirements
  • internal applicant tracking system provider
  • applicable tax, social welfare, employment authorities
  • third party insurance and benefits providers including but not limited to those third parties responsible for the provision of any occupational pension, Private Health Insurance, Private Medical Insurance and Life Assurance schemes
  • SHS group financial consultants, professional advisers and in-house and outside counsel
  • where permitted by law and required as a part of your job function to SHS
  • customers or vendors or other third parties who need to contact you where this is helpful to developing the business, for example to compete for, or meet obligations under, an existing or possible business contract
  • HR and IT personnel of another entity responsible for HR management or IT processing and security functions.

When SHS does outsource the processing of Personal Data to third parties or provide Personal Data to third party service providers, we require those third parties to protect the Personal Data they are provided with appropriate security measures and prohibit them from using the Personal Data for their own purposes or from disclosing the Personal Data to others.

DATA RETENTION
Your data will be stored in accordance with our retention policy, and is dependent upon the nature of the record. A copy of our Records Retention, Protection and Erasure Policy can be obtained from Human Resources or on our intranet.
If you have any questions about us or how we handle your data, please contact The Data Compliance Manager us at dataprotection@shs-group.co.uk.
Note too that 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. Details of how to contact the ICO can be found on its website: http://ico.org.uk