Job Applicant Privacy Notice

What is the purpose of this document?

Dengie Crops 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 sent a copy of this privacy notice because you are applying for work 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).

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.

We have appointed a data protection lead 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 protection lead: Angela Downs, Dengie Crops Limited, Hall Road, Asheldham, Southminster, Essex CM0 7JF

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.

As part of any recruitment process, the organisation collects and processes personal data relating to job applicants. The organisation is committed to being transparent about how it collects and uses that data and to meeting its data protection obligations.

What information does the organisation collect?

The organisation collects, stores, and uses a range of information about you in connection with your application to work with us. This includes:

• your name, address, date of birth, gender and contact details, including email address and telephone number;
• details of your qualifications, skills, experience and employment history;
• information about your current level of remuneration, including benefit entitlements;
• whether you have a disability for which the organisation needs to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process and;
• information about your entitlement to work in the UK; and

The organisation collects this information in a variety of ways. For example, data might be contained in application forms, CVs, obtained from your passport or other identity documents, or collected through interviews or other forms of assessment.

The organisation will also collect personal data about you from third parties, such as references supplied by former employers.  The organisation will seek information from third parties only once a job offer to you has been made and will inform you that it is doing so.

Data will be stored in a range of different places, including on your application record, in HR management systems and on other IT systems (including email).

Why does the organisation process personal data?

The organisation needs to process data to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract with you. It also needs to process your data to enter into a contract with you or to decide whether to enter into a contract with you.

In some cases, the organisation needs to process data to ensure that it is complying with its legal obligations. For example, it is required to check a successful applicant’s eligibility to work in the UK before employment starts.

The organisation has a legitimate interest in processing personal data during the recruitment process and for keeping records of the process. Processing data from job applicants allows the organisation to manage the recruitment process, assess and confirm a candidate’s suitability for employment, communicate with a candidate about the recruitment process, carry out employment history and reference checks and decide to whom to offer a job. The organisation may also need to process data from job applicants to respond to and defend against legal claims.

Where the organisation relies on legitimate interests as a reason for processing data, it has considered whether those interests are overridden by the rights and freedoms of job applicants, employees or workers and has concluded that they are not.

The organisation processes health information if it needs to make reasonable adjustments to the recruitment process for candidates who have a disability. This is to carry out its obligations and exercise specific rights in relation to employment.

The organisation will not use your data for any purpose other than the recruitment exercise for which you have applied.

If your application is unsuccessful, the organisation will keep your personal data on file in case there are future employment opportunities for which you may be suited. The organisation will ask for your consent before it keeps your data for this purpose and you are free to withdraw your consent at any time by contacting the data protection lead.

Who has access to data?

Your information will be shared internally, including with members of the Admin team (including payroll), your line manager, managers in the business area in which you work and IT staff if access to the data is necessary for performance of their roles.

The organisation will only share your personal information with the following third parties for the purposes of processing your application, such as recruitment agencies.

All our third-party service providers 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.

If your application for employment is successful and we make you an offer of employment, we will then share your data with the organisation’s HR Consultant to produce your terms of employment and to former employers to obtain references for you.

The organisation will not transfer your data outside the UK.

How does the organisation protect data?

The organisation takes the security of your data seriously. It has internal policies and controls in place to ensure that your data is not lost, altered, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by our employees in the proper performance of their duties. General access to the Personnel files is limited to the Managing Director and the PA to the Managing Director.  The Company Secretary and the Financial Controller also have access for processing purposes e.g. Payroll. More details of these policies and controls may be obtained from our data protection lead.

Where the organisation engages third parties to process personal data on its behalf, they do so on the basis of written instructions, are under a duty of confidentiality and are obliged to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of data.

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.

For how long does the organisation keep data?

If your application for employment is unsuccessful, the organisation will hold your data on file for two months after the end of the relevant recruitment process. 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.

If you agree to allow the organisation to keep your personal data on file, the organisation will hold your data on file for a further ten months for consideration for future employment opportunities. At the end of that period or once you withdraw your consent, your data is deleted or destroyed.

If your application for employment is successful, personal data gathered during the recruitment process will be transferred to your personnel file and retained during your employment. The periods for which your data will be held will be provided to you in a new privacy notice.

Your rights

As a data subject, you have a number of rights. You can:

• access and obtain a copy of your data on request. This is commonly known as a “data subject access request”;
• request the organisation to change incorrect or incomplete data;
• request the organisation to delete or stop processing your data, for example where the data is no longer necessary for the purposes of processing;
• request the transfer of your personal information to another party;
• object to the processing of your data where the organisation is relying on its legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing; and
• ask the organisation to stop processing data for a period if data is inaccurate or there is a dispute about whether your interests override the organisation’s legitimate grounds for processing data.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact our data protection lead at [email protected]

If you believe that the organisation has not complied with your data protection rights, you can complain to the Information Commissioner.

What if you do not provide personal data?

You are under no statutory or contractual obligation to provide data to the organisation during the recruitment process. However, if you do not provide the information, the organisation may not be able to process your application properly or at all. If your application is successful, it will be a condition of any job offer that you provide evidence of your right to work in the UK and satisfactory references.

You are under no obligation to provide information for equal opportunities monitoring purposes and there are no consequences for your application if you choose not to provide such information.

Automated decision-making

Recruitment processes are not based solely on automated decision-making.