Why do we need your personal information?

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 benefits and pension.

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 right 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.

In other cases, the council has a legitimate interest in processing personal data before, during and after the end of the employment relationship.

Processing employee data allows the council to do the following:

Recruitment and Employment

• Run recruitment and promotion processes. 
• Manage recruitment and employment processes, including pre-application interest (for example, job alerts and follow-up emails for individuals who have expressed interest in employment). 

Employment Records and Administration

• Maintain accurate and up-to-date employment records and contact details (including emergency contacts), and records of employee contractual and statutory rights. 
• Ensure effective general Human Resources and business administration. 
• Provide references on request for current or former employees.

Workforce Management and Development

• Operate and keep records of employee performance and related processes, to plan for career development, succession planning, and workforce management purposes. 
• Operate and keep records of absence and absence management procedures, to allow effective workforce management and ensure employees receive pay or benefits to which they are entitled. 
• Operate and keep records of other types of leave (including maternity, paternity, adoption, parental and shared parental leave), to ensure compliance with leave entitlements and effective workforce management. 
• Operate and keep records of training attendance to ensure employees meet role requirements, corporate training obligations, and workforce planning needs.

Health, Safety, and Wellbeing

• Obtain occupational health advice to comply with duties relating to individuals with disabilities, meet health and safety obligations, and ensure employees receive pay or benefits to which they are entitled. 
• Ensure health, safety, and wellbeing in the workplace.
• Collect and process personal information as part of workplace risk assessments. This may include details about your role, working environment, and any adjustments required for safe working practices (for example, Display Screen Equipment assessments, manual handling assessments, lone working arrangements).
• Record, investigate, and report workplace incidents, accidents, and near misses. This includes details of individuals involved, witness statements, and relevant health information necessary to meet legal obligations and improve workplace safety.

Equality and Diversity

• Monitor and promote equality and diversity in the workplace.

Security and Access

• Provide and monitor access to systems and maintain security (for employees and elected members), including issuing access cards, laptops, council email accounts and role-based system access. 
• Use staff photographs to maintain security, help staff identify each other, publicise library events (library staff only), and improve collaboration across the council.

Human Resources Processes and Compliance 

• Operate and keep records of disciplinary and grievance processes for as long as appropriate to the employment relationship and within the law to ensure acceptable conduct. 
• Meet reporting obligations to statutory authorities. 
• Establish, respond to, and defend against legal claims.

Additional Purposes

• Provide, support, and administer the Access to Work scheme. 
• Operate appropriate business continuity management measures. 
• Fulfil contractual and statutory obligations (for example, payroll, pensions, tax, allowances and expenses). 
• Calculate carbon emissions linked to employment activities to support the council’s environmental commitments. 

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

Information about trade union membership is processed to allow the council to operate check-off for union subscriptions.

Where the council processes other special categories of personal data, such as information about ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health or religion or belief, this is done for the purposes of equal opportunities monitoring. We will also use your data to better understand the services we provide and to help us build those services for the future. We may also use your data to identify if our services are fulfilling our legal obligations.

Unless explicitly noted when we collect your information, we do not carry out automated decision making (where a decision is made by a system or algorithm that may affect you in a significant way).