The Council's Human Resources (HR) and Organisational Development (OD) Service collects and processes personal data relating to our employees to manage our working relationship with you both directly and through our commissioned private sector processors including, but not an exhaustive list Liberata UK Ltd (Payroll, HR Transactional), Maitland Medical (Occupational Health); Wider Plan (Kiddivouchers); Cyclescheme (Bike to work scheme), Training providers, and, for some recruitment activities: PeopleScout (Recruitment services), Cornerstone OnDemand (providers of recruitment software Talentlink) and Modern Hire (providers of an online video service to support the part of the recruitment process).

This includes employment law and standards, administration of employee benefits, and all aspects of recruitment and employee management, staff engagement, feedback and compliance. We are committed to being transparent about how we collect and use your personal data and to meeting our obligations under data protection legislation.

These processing activities undertaken include:

• manage the HR and payroll functions so you receive correct remuneration and benefits and in order to administer your HR employment records
• provision of absence management, occupational health, employee assistance services, counselling, health risk management and health surveillance
• provision of salary sacrifice and other benefit schemes including but not an exhaustive list childcare vouchers, bike to work scheme, purchase leave scheme to those who are eligible
• management of your performance
• provision of training and development opportunities including booking, administration, evaluation and reporting
• provision of coaching services
• reporting of professional memberships
• provision of apprenticeships and qualifications including booking, administration and reporting to external bodies
• enabling you to apply for vacancies/other roles within the Council
• provision of recruitment, onboarding, and associated functions including but not an exhaustive list and for us to manage pre-employment, medical clearance, qualification and Disclosure Barring Service checks, details of previous employer, source of applicant e.g. employment, unemployed, student, and receive/request references
• provide you with access to our IT systems
• monitoring your use of our data and ICT systems to ensure our network and information security and ensure compliance with our ICT and information governance policies
• equality and diversity services including Access to Work and Reasonable Adjustment Passports
• monitoring and reporting of workforce statistics 
• compliance with regulatory and inspection regimes (e.g. Local Government Ombudsman, Ofsted and Care Quality Commission), including providing statistics
• prevention and detection of crime
• protection of the public funds we administer, including prevention and detection of fraud
• monitoring and reporting of access to and use of Council owned/rented buildings and car parks and ensure compliance to associated policies

The service processes personal information which may include, but is not limited to, the following personal data:

• personal details – including name, age, address, date of birth, marital or civil partnership status, gender, documents proving your identity, photograph, qualifications or other protected characteristics
• contact information – e.g. telephone number(s) / email address
• your next of kin, dependants and emergency contacts
• your nationality and entitlement to work in the UK
• information about your criminal record, if you have one
• Personal Reference Numbers – e.g. personnel and payroll number, National Insurance (NI) Number, vehicle registration number(s), tax codes
• financial details – including your bank account information, your remuneration, and entitlement to benefits such as pensions or insurance cover, expense claims, court orders
• employment details including terms and conditions of your employment / contract / agreement, and employment history including start and end dates with previous employers and us
• your work pattern (days of work and working hours) and attendance at work
• your periods of leave taken from work, for example, holiday, sickness absence, family leave, study leave, industrial action leave, other leave absences and the reasons for the leave
• assessments of your performance, including performance reviews and ratings, talent and performance feedback and improvement plans and related correspondence
• records of training and development activity, qualifications and apprenticeships undertaken, professional memberships and performance against assessed standards
• details of disciplinary or grievance procedures in which you have been involved, including any warnings issued to you and related correspondence
• your medical or health conditions, including whether you have a disability for which Worcestershire County Council needs to make reasonable adjustments
• other operational information processed in the course of carrying out our activities, including but not limited to: CCTV footage, recordings of telephone conversations, IP addresses and website visit histories, access card data, Automated Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) data, logs of visitors, and logs of accidents, injuries and insurance claims
• equality and diversity monitoring information, for example information about your ethnic origin, sexual orientation, and religion or belief

The legal bases for processing this personal information are:

• necessary for compliance with a legal obligation, for example to check entitlement to work in the UK, and to comply with health and safety laws
• necessary for a contract, or entering into a contract, with the individual, for example provide an employment contract, to pay in accordance with an employment contract and to administer benefit, pension and insurance entitlements
• legitimate interests in the purposes of managing employees, including recruitment, managing performance, workforce management and training
• necessary for your or another person's vital interests (likely to be a rare circumstance)

We may also process some special category (sensitive) information, which is relevant to individual cases but may include some but is not limited to:

• biometric information
• physical or mental health details
• racial or ethnic origin
• religious or other beliefs
• Trade Union Membership
• political affiliation / opinions
• sex life and sexual orientation

The conditions for processing this special category information are:

• necessary for the purposes of carrying out the obligations and exercising specific rights of the controller or of the data subject in the field of employment law
• necessary for identifying or keeping under review the equality of opportunity or treatment (information about ethnic origin, sexual orientation or religion or belief) unless you tell us not to process for this purpose or choose not to provide this information; there are no consequences of choosing to not provide this data
• with your consent (in limited circumstances)

We may also process information about staff criminal convictions and offences (including alleged offences), criminal proceedings, outcomes and sentences. This is to ensure that individuals are permitted to undertake the role in question.

The legal bases for processing this personal information are:

• necessary for a contract, or entering into a contract, with the individual. In addition we rely on the processing condition in the Data Protection Act in Schedule 1 part 1 paragraph 1

We may collect this information in a variety of ways including from:

• application forms or CVs
• your identity documents including your passport, your driving licence or other forms of ID provided by you
• forms completed by you at the start of or during employment (such as benefit nomination forms)
• correspondence with you
• interviews, meetings or other assessments
• references provided by third parties including former employers and persons able to provide a character reference
• information from employment background check providers
• information from credit reference agencies
• information from criminal records checks permitted by law
• information you input into our HR Information System

We may need to share the personal information you have given to us or we’ve collected about you with other internal services and external organisations where access to the data is necessary for performance of their role or service provided. These include but are not limited to:

• the HR and OD team
• the recruiting manager
• your line manager
• managers in the business area in which you work
• IT staff
• Disclosure and Barring Service
• Legal Services
• other employers
• other third parties including the police and the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) for employment background checks
• NHS National Immunisation Management Service for the Covid-19 vaccination programme
• Ombudsman Services and regulatory authorities
• external bodies involved in the provision of training and development, apprenticeships and qualifications including training providers, colleges, Governors (Education and Skills Investment), Employment and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA), National Apprenticeship Service, OFSTED, Awarding Bodies – City and Guilds, Skillsfirst etc, End Point Assessment Organisations, External Training providers or WCC Apprenticeships employer provider Team, Skills for Care (for social care employees)
• West Midlands Employers who operate the WMJobs website
• Skills for Care for the ASC Workforce Data Set
• Department for Education (DfE) information about our child and family social work workforce (under the Children Act 1989, Section 83)
• organisations including the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government, Cabinet Office, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), other local authorities, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), and the police who are responsible for auditing or administering public funds including fraud and the National Fraud Initiative, The Pensions Regulator
• Trade Unions or employee representatives e.g. information from the employer and consultation by the employer under section 188 Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (TULR(C)A), related to redundancy or under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006
• pension providers, if you are part of the pension fund
• providers of staff benefits and other related services to enhance our employment offer, including Edenred and Tusker

We also share your personal data with third parties who are contracted with the Council and process data on our behalf. These processors include our HR/Payroll provider, Occupational Health provider, Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system provider, Staff benefits providers, Learning and Development providers, and recruitment services providers.

Information will only ever be shared when it is strictly necessary to help us provide effective services and you may have the right to refuse. We will not pass it onto any other parties unless required to do so by law or in all reasonable circumstances the disclosure is fair and warranted for the purposes of processing or subject to a data protection exemption.

We have specific data sharing agreements in place with local agencies and sometimes the law requires that we may have to pass your details on to a third party, for example, to prevent crime.

For successful applicants, we will hold your personal data for the duration of your employment.  The length of time we hold your data after the end of your employment differs depending on the type of work you are employed to deliver – for example we retain social work employee records for a longer period of time. The standard periods for which your data is held are set out in our summary Disposal Schedule (Excel file).

For unsuccessful applicants, records will be deleted 12 months after the recruitment process finished.   

Please note stated retention periods may be subject to any legal holds imposed under the Inquiries Act 2005 that may concern the information and override standard retention periods.

You are entitled to a copy, or a description, of the personal data we hold that relates to you, subject to lawful restrictions. Please go to our Make a Data Protection Request page to find out how to make a request or contact the Corporate Information Governance Team (CIGT) – dataprotection@worcestershire.gov.uk or 01905 84 5571.

You may also be entitled to have incorrect or incomplete data amended, object to the processing (in some circumstances), and the restriction or erasure of your personal data where the data is no longer necessary for the purposes of processing depending on the service and legal basis.  In the first instance please contact your line manager or HR advisor to exercise these Information Rights.

Please see our overarching Privacy Notice for further contact details and if you have a complaint about your information rights.

We keep this Privacy Notice under regular review and we will place any updates on this web page. This Notice was last updated on 27 March 2023.