Vertas Group Limited collects and processes personal data relating to applicants to manage the recruitment process and potential future
employment relationship.
The company is committed to being transparent about how it collects and uses that data and to meeting its data protection obligations.
Who We Are
Under Data Protection legislation, Vertas Group is a data controller. The contact details for the
company are as follows:
Website: www.Vertas.co.uk. Email: Mail@Vertas.co.uk.
Our Data Protection Officer (DPO)
The company’s data protection officer email: DPO@Vertas.co.uk
Categories of Information
The company collects and processes a range of information about its employees. This includes:
- your name, address and contact details, including email address and telephone number, date of
birth and gender; - Your photograph for ID Badges or website content
- the terms and conditions of your employment;
- details of your qualifications, skills, experience and employment history, including start and end dates, with previous employers and with the organisation;
- information about your nationality and entitlement to work in the UK;
- information about your criminal record;
- information about medical or health conditions, including whether or not you have a disability for which the organisation needs to make reasonable adjustments.
After offer stage:
- information about your remuneration, including entitlement to benefits such as pensions;
- details of your bank account and national insurance number;
- information about your marital status, next of kin, dependants, and emergency contacts;
- details of periods of leave taken by you, including holiday, sickness absence and family leave,
and the reasons for the leave;
The company may collect this information in a variety of ways. For example, data might be collected through application forms or CVs; obtained from your passport or other identity documents such as your driving licence; from forms completed by you at the start of or during employment (such as benefit nomination forms); from correspondence with you; or through interviews, meetings or other
assessments.
In some cases, the company may collect personal data about you from third parties, such as references supplied by former employers, information from employment background check providers and information from criminal records checks permitted by law.
Data will be stored in a range of different places, including in your personal file, in the People and Payroll management systems and in other IT systems (including the company’s email system and intranet).
Why We Collect and Use This Information
The company needs to process data to:
- identify and evaluate candidates for potential employment, as well as for future roles that may become available;
- maintain records in relation to recruiting and hiring;
- 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;
- fostering our diversity and inclusion programs and practices;
- conducting background checks, including, to the extent permitted by applicable law, and if you receive an offer from us, criminal history checks;
- protecting our legal rights to the extent authorised or permitted by law;
- To enter into an employment contract with you and to meet its our 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, to monitor your training against your job role requirements and to administer benefit, pension and insurance entitlements as appropriate.
- To respond to and defend against legal claims;
- Communicate with you on business updates and run staff recognition programmes eg Making the Difference
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) including Duty of Care to employees.
Who has access to personal data?
Your information may be shared internally, including with members of the People and recruitment team (including payroll), your line manager, senior managers, and IT staff if access to the data is necessary for performance of their roles.
The company shares your data with third parties 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 and SIA vetting. The company may need to share details of your employment with clients of the company for the location you are employed to work at.
The company also shares your data with third parties that process data on its behalf, in connection with Recruitment, the provision of benefits, the provision of pensions, the provision of occupational health services, the provision of absence management services, and the provision of time and attendance services.
The company may also share your data with an external training supplier where we are required to register your details to enable you to carry out mandatory job related training.
The company will not transfer your data to countries outside the European Economic Area.
How Does the Company Protect Data?
The company takes the security of your data seriously. The company has internal policies and controls in place to try to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by its employees in the performance of their duties.
We train all our employees, relevant to their role, on their role and responsibility of processing and protecting personal data. We have security provisions in place with our IT Provider and People and Payroll system provider to ensure personal data is secure, such as firewalls, anti virus software, security profile settings, etc.
The People and Payroll teams have defined processes in place to ensure that personal data is accurately maintained, archived and deleted in line with the retention timescales.
Where the company 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.
For how long does Vertas Group keep data?
The company will hold your personal data for the duration of your employment.
The periods for which your data is held after the end of employment are:
- Absence Management Service, one complete financial year after leaving employment.
- Payroll records, six complete tax years after your leaving date
- Personal and Training Records, six complete years after your leave date
- Asbestos Training, 40 completed years after your leave date.
Requesting Access to Your Personal Data
As a data subject, you have a number of rights. You can:
- access and obtain a copy of your data on request;
- require the company to change incorrect or incomplete data;
- require the company to delete or stop processing your data, for example where the data is no longer necessary for the purposes of processing; and
- object to the processing of your data where the company is relying on its legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing.
If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact complete the subject access request on the application website
If you have a concern about the way we are collecting or using your personal data, we ask that you raise your concern with us in the first instance by contacting our DPO. Alternatively, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/
What if you do not provide Personal Data?
If you do not provide the required details as part of the application or onboarding process then this may result in your application being unsuccessful as we may not be able to process you through our system, if you have a legitimate reason for withholding specific information then please contact our Recruitment team.
You have some obligations under your employment contract to provide the company with data. In particular, you are required to report absences from work and may be required to provide information about disciplinary or other matters under the implied duty of good faith. You may also have to provide the company with data in order to exercise your statutory rights, such as in relation to statutory leave entitlements. Failing to provide the data may mean that you are unable to exercise your statutory rights.
Certain information, such as contact details, your right to work in the UK and payment details, have to be provided to enable the company to enter a contract of employment with you. If you do not provide other information, this will prevent the company’s ability to administer the rights and obligations arising as a result of the employment relationship efficiently.
Automated decision-making
Employment decisions are not based solely on automated decision-making.
Further information
If you would like to discuss anything in this privacy notice, please contact our DPO.