Employee

As an employer Redditch Borough Council and Bromsgrove District Council (the council) must process personal information about you in order to fulfil contractual arrangements as well as under employment law and other relevant legal obligations (such as health and safety and equalities). 

Where possible the council will minimise the amount of personal data they collect and hold.

What personal data is collected?

The Council collects and processes a range of information about you. This includes:

• personal details including your name, address and contact details, including email address and telephone number, date of birth
• your photograph
• gender
• information about your marital status, next of kin, dependents and emergency contacts
• information about medical or health conditions, including whether or not you have a disability for which the Council needs to make reasonable adjustments.
• information used for equal opportunities monitoring, including your ethnic origin, sexual orientation, religion or belief.
• details of your qualifications, skills, experience and employment history, including start and end dates, with previous employers and with the Council and continuous service dates
• information about your nationality and entitlement to work in the UK.
• details of your bank account, tax codes and national insurance number.
• details of your driving licence, including any endorsements, details vehicle insurance and vehicle MOT (if applicable),
• current and previous job titles, job descriptions, pay grades, pension entitlement, hours/days of work, including attendance and other terms and conditions relating to your employment/engagement with us.
• information about your entitlement to benefits related to your employment and/or insurance cover.
• information about your criminal record (DBS) (if appropriate)
• details of periods of leave taken by you, including holiday, sickness absence, dependency leave, career breaks, maternity, paternity, adoption, parental and shared parental leave and the reasons for the leave.
• details of any concerns e.g., disciplinary or grievance procedures in which you have been involved, including any warnings issued to you and related correspondence.
• assessments of your performance, including appraisals, performance reviews training you have participated in, performance development plans and related documentation.
• information from the interviewing process i.e., Interview notes and assessments
• details of trade union membership; and where you consent to give information for the payment of trade union subscriptions via payroll.
• information linking you to a post(s) within the Council.
• personal data about you from third parties, such as references supplied by former employers.
• CCTV footage
• building entry records

What is the legal bases for this processing?

The legal basis for processing this information is the execution of a contract, legal obligation and legitimate interest. Where the Council relies on legitimate interests as a reason for processing data, it has considered whether those interests are overridden by the rights and freedoms of employees or workers and has concluded that they are not. Where special category data is processed this is done under obligations of employment law.

Why does the council process your data

The council needs to process data to enter into an employment contract with you and to meet its obligations under your employment contract. For example, it needs to process your data to provide you with an employment contract, to pay you in accordance with your employment contract and to administer benefit, pension and insurance entitlements.

In some cases, the council needs to process data to ensure that it is complying with its legal obligations. For example, it is required to check an employee's entitlement to work in the UK, to deduct tax, to comply with health and safety laws and to enable employees to take periods of leave to which they are entitled. For certain positions, it is necessary to carry out criminal record checks to ensure that individuals are permitted to undertake the role in question.

In other cases, the organisation has a legitimate interest in processing personal data before, during and after the end of the employment relationship. Processing employee data allows the organisation to:

• Run recruitment and promotion processes;
• Maintain accurate and up-to-date employment records and contact details (including details of who to contact in the event of an emergency), and records of employee contractual and statutory rights
• Operate and keep a record of disciplinary and grievance processes, to ensure acceptable conduct within the workplace
• Operate and keep a record of employee performance and related processes, to plan for career development, and for succession planning and workforce management purposes
• Operate and keep a record of absence and absence management procedures, to allow effective workforce management and ensure that employees are receiving the pay or other benefits to which they are entitled
• Obtain occupational health advice, to ensure that it complies with duties in relation to individuals with disabilities, meet its obligations under health and safety law, and ensure that employees are receiving the pay or other benefits to which they are entitled
• Operate and keep a record of other types of leave (including maternity, paternity, adoption and parental leave), to allow effective workforce management, to ensure that the organisation complies with duties in relation to leave entitlement, and to ensure that employees are receiving the pay or other benefits to which they are entitled
• Ensure effective general HR and business administration
• Provide references on request for current or former employees
• Respond to and defend against legal claims; and
• Maintain and promote equality in the workplace.
• Assess the suitability of deployment into other areas of the council where the need arises through the analysis of key skills and competencies.

Some special categories of personal data, such as information about health or medical conditions, is processed to carry out employment law obligations (such as those in relation to employees with disabilities and health and safety purposes).

Where the organisation processes other special categories of personal data, such as information about sexual orientation, gender and health, this is done for the purposes of equal opportunities monitoring.

The council also operate CCTV systems in some of its locations used by staff.   The recording of staff images may be used as an audit mechanism to confirm policies and standards are complied with in practice, in terms of keeping employees safe, protecting business interests and upholding health and safety. 

As an evolving business, the council utilise Teams for the majority of meetings, internally and externally.  Streaming delivers both audio and video content and you can control whether to turn on video and audio or just audio.  Where Officers chose to use audio only, in the interest of transparency and to understand an individual’s role in the meetings, your photo may be made available to identify you.  Where a meeting is public, your image may be shared.  Meeting presenters can record the meeting and it gets stored on their network drive. Some services have a legal responsibility to provide records of meetings and make the meetings accessible to the public.  The retention of these meetings are managed by the individual user. The council may use the photo available from Active Directory.  This photo may be available in other office programs such as Outlook.

Is the data shared with anyone else?

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

The organisation shares your data with third parties in order to obtain pre-employment references from other employers, obtain employment background checks from third-party providers and obtain necessary criminal records checks from the Disclosure and Barring Service.

The organisation also shares your data with third parties that process data on its behalf, in connection with payroll, the provision of benefits, the provision of occupational health services and in the provision of safeguarding i.e., DBS clearances.

The organisation will also share sufficient data with third party training providers commissioned to deliver services to employees in connection with participation and completion of apprenticeship training programmes and professional qualifications.

Where a third-party supplier is used, appropriate checks and safe guards have been put in place.

As a public authority we receive information requests under the Freedom of Information Act (2000) which may mean we have to consider whether to disclose staff information (including agency and temporary staff) in response to these requests.

It is less likely that information about those who do not deal directly with the public in an operational capacity will be disclosed. The Corporate Management Team will have more information disclosed about them, and as such, their contact information is published on the websites.

Full consideration will be given to Data Protection and Freedom of Information legislation when making decisions about whether information should be disclosed in response to information requests.

The council will not share data with any other third party unless required to do so by law or for the purposes of safeguarding, a specific medical need/ assistance or health & safety.

Most personal data is held in an employee file and will be retained for 6 years after the end of employment.

Except in the following cases:

• Right to work documents will be destroyed 2 years after the end of employment.
• Any allegations raised relating to safeguarding of children or vulnerable adults, will be kept until the person reaches 65 or 10 years whichever is longer.
• Medical data relating to exposure to lead or asbestos will be kept for 40 years once identified by occupational health monitoring.
• Pension information is potentially held until staff member death
• Your images are taken for the purpose of identification on your security pass and on the Council’s intranet, particularly the Staff Finder.  The use of your photograph is therefore necessary for security purposes and to support effective and efficient management of the Council by assisting employees to identify each other and to help encourage positive working relationships.  This is seen as a necessary part of working for a modern council and for clarity please note that your consent to the use of your photograph in these ways is not required.  The Corporate Leadership Team can expect their image to appear externally as part of their job role.  Images will be retained for the period of your employment or overwritten in the case of renewing your badge.
• Images captured by CCTV will not be kept for longer than 31 days.  However on occasion there may be a need to keep images for longer, for example, where there is a need to investigate an incident. 

Images captured by CCTV will not be kept for longer than 31 days.  However on occasion there may be a need to keep images for longer, for example, where there is a need to investigate an incident. 

What are your rights?

Everyone has rights around their data, if you would like to find out more about your rights visit www.ico.org.uk