As your employer (including where you are on secondment to Ofcom, or may be working for us as a freelance contractor), or prospective employer, Ofcom is required to keep and process information about you for normal employment purposes. The information we hold and process will be used only for our management and administrative use, to carry out our employment tasks, or to comply with our legal obligations. We will hold and use it to enable us to run the business and manage our relationship with you effectively, lawfully and appropriately, in connection with the recruitment process, whilst you are an Ofcom employee, at the time when your employment ends and, usually, for a period of 6 years after you have left. This includes using information to enable us to:
- comply with the terms of the employment contract we have with you
- perform our statutory functions
- comply with our legal obligations (for example, with respect to tax legislation) and to protect our legal position in the event of legal proceedings
- monitor and improve our performance as an employer (including with respect to diversity).
Much of the information we hold will have been provided by you but some may come from other sources such as your line manager, referees, or current employer where this is not Ofcom.
The sort of information we may collect and hold includes:
- Your application form which includes your name, address, telephone number
- Your curriculum vitae with details of your work experience to date
- Your references
- Copies of your passport and qualification certificates
- Your contract of employment and any amendments to it
- Correspondence with, or about, you, for example letters to you about a pay rise
- Information needed for payroll, benefits and expenses purposes such as bank details
- Contact and emergency contact details (including next of kin)
- Records of holiday
- Details of your age and gender
- Records relating to your career history such as training records, appraisals and other performance measures
- Any disciplinary and grievance records
In some circumstances, we may also collect information that, under the GDPR, is deemed to be sensitive personal data. This includes:
- Records and any details of sickness as well as information relating to your health including Occupational Health reports which could include reasons for absence and GP reports and notes. This information will be used in order to comply with our health and safety occupational health obligations including assessing how your health affects your ability to do your job and whether any adjustments to your job might be appropriate. We will also require this information to administer and manage sick pay.
- Nationality – this will be used for monitoring equality and diversity within our organisation
- Race/Ethnic origin – this will be used for monitoring equality and diversity within our organisation
- Religious belief – this will be used for monitoring equality and diversity within our organisation
- Sex/sexual orientation – this will be used for monitoring equality and diversity within our organisation
- Details of any criminal convictions – this will be used for monitoring equality and diversity within our organisation
We may also monitor computer use, as detailed in our Acceptable Use Policy. We also maintain records of the hours that colleagues work by way of the timesheets which include sickness absence recording.
We may also need to share your data with the third-parties who provide our pension, health insurance schemes and/or other ‘Choices’ benefits to our employees.
Where we have collected your personal data for the purposes of our employment functions, we will retain it for a period of 6 years after you have left Ofcom. Online job applications will be held for up to 3 years for unsuccessful candidates for trend activity reporting purposes and to contact applicants in the future about jobs that they maybe interested in. We will retain interview notes and/or any supporting recruitment information for all applicants for a period of 6 months
As set out in our General Privacy Notice, if, in the future, we intend to process your personal data for a purpose other than that for which it was collected, we will provide you with information on that purpose and any other relevant information.
