Introduction
ABCA Group is a “controller” in relation to personal data. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you.
You are being provided with our Applicant Privacy Notice because you are applying for a role with us (whether as an employee, worker or contractor). It makes you aware of 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 UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). This document will be updated in line with future changes under 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.
The kind of information 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:
- The information you have provided to us in your CV and covering letter.
- The information you have provided on our application form, including name, title, address, telephone number, personal email address, date of birth, gender, employment history, qualifications, and other information as requested as part of the application process
- Any information you provide to us during an interview which is supplementary to your application form, such as results of interview tests and assessments (e.g. Word / Excel / technical assessments)
We may also collect, store and use the following types of more sensitive personal information:
- Information about your race or ethnicity for the purposes of regulatory reporting.
- Information about your health, including any medical conditions.
- Information about financial sanctions, criminal convictions and offences.
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 some of the same category of information as described above
- Background check providers, from which we collect information about financial sanctions, criminal convictions and offences.
- Your named referees.
- Data from publicly accessible sources such as social media and the internet.
How we will use information about you
We will use the personal information we collect about you to:
- Assess your skills, qualifications, and suitability for the role.
- Carry out background and reference checks, where applicable.
- 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 since it would be beneficial to our business to appoint someone to that role.
We also need to process your personal information to decide whether to enter into a contract of employment or service with you.
Having received your CV and/or your application form, we will then process that information to decide whether you meet the basic requirements to be shortlisted for the role. If you do, we will decide whether your application is strong enough to invite you for an interview. If we decide to call you for an interview, we will use the information you provide to us at the interview to decide whether to offer you the role. If we decide to offer you the role we will then take up references and carry out a criminal record check and vetting to BS7858 standard, before confirming your appointment.
If you fail to provide personal information
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. For example, if we require a credit check or references for this role and you fail to provide us with relevant details, we will not be able to take your application further.
How we use particularly sensitive personal information
We will use your particularly sensitive personal 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, for example whether adjustments need to be made during an interview.
- We will use information about your race or national or ethnic origin, if provided, to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting.
- We will use information about your security screening, to ensure compliance with client contractual requirements and to operate within industry guidelines, on who can and can’t work on specific contracts and within the industry in general
Information about criminal convictions
We will process information about criminal convictions. We will collect information about your criminal convictions history if we would like to offer you the work or role, conditional on checks and any other conditions, such as references, being satisfactory. We are required to carry out a criminal records check in order to satisfy ourselves that there is nothing in your criminal convictions history which makes you unsuitable for the role. In particular:
- We are contractually required by industry regulatory bodies such as BAFE and NSI, to carry out criminal record checks for those carrying out work in fire and security.
- We are contractually required by clients to carry out criminal record checks for those carrying out work on their contracts.
- Our work requires a high degree of trust and integrity since it involves dealing with security of residential, public and commercial premises, and so we would like to ask you to seek a basic or enhanced disclosure of your criminal records history, dependent on role or work, which is renewed every 2 years.
We have in place an appropriate policy document and safeguards which we are required by law to maintain, when processing such data.
Automated decision-making
You will not be subject to decisions that will have a significant impact on you based solely on automated decision-making.
Data sharing
Why might you share my personal information with third parties?
We will only share your personal information with our recognised vetting service for the purposes of processing your application. 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.
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. 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.
Data retention
How long will you use my information for?
We will retain your personal information for a period of 3 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 applicable laws and regulations.
If we wish to retain your personal information on file, on the basis that a further opportunity may arise in 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.
Rights of access, correction, erasure, and restriction
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) 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.
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@abcasystems.co.uk.
Right to withdraw consent
When you apply for this role or work, you consent to us processing your personal information for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. You have the right to withdraw your consent for processing for that purpose at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact us. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your application and will dispose of your personal data securely unless we have another legal justification for retaining the data.
Data privacy manager
We have appointed a data privacy manager 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 data privacy manager. You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) who is responsible for data protection issues in the UK.
