Introduction

Welcome to our privacy policy.

We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit our website (regardless of where you visit it from) and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

This privacy policy is provided in a layered format so you can click through to the specific areas set out below. Please also use the Glossary to understand the meaning of some of the terms used in this privacy policy

• IMPORTANT INFORMATION AND WHO WE ARE
• THE DATA WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU
• HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL DATA COLLECTED?
• HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA
• DISCLOSURES OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA
• INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS
• DATA SECURITY
• DATA RETENTION
• YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS
• GLOSSARY

1. Important information and who we are

We are GCS RECRUITMENT SPECIALISTS LIMITED a company registered in England and Wales with registered company number 05609278. You will know us as GCS.

We are part of nGAGE Talent (whose full company name should you want to check is nGAGE Specialist Recruitment Limited registered company number 06189822) which is made up of different legal entities including us, details of which can be found here: Our Portfolio - nGAGE Talent - nGAGE Talent

This privacy policy is issued on behalf of the nGAGE Talent group of companies so when we mention "nGAGE", "we", "us" or "our" in this privacy policy, we are referring to the relevant company in nGAGE Talent responsible for processing your data. We will let you know which entity will be the controller for your data when you apply for a role. GCS is the controller and responsible for this website.

If you have a problem or just want to understand more

nGAGE Talent has appointed a data protection officer (DPO) who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy policy. If you have any questions about this privacy policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact the DPO by email [email protected] or you can write to us at 5th Floor 4 Coleman Street London EC2R 5AR. You can chose but it is quicker if you email us.

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

Purpose of this privacy policy

So that we can provide work-finding services we must process personal data (including sensitive category data). This privacy policy aims to give you information on how your personal data is collected and processed.

This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

It is important that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy policy or fair processing policy we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. We have tried to make it as user friendly as possible but recommend you grab a cup of tea and a seat before you make a start. This privacy policy supplements other notices and privacy policies and is not intended to override them.

Changes to the privacy policy and your duty to inform us of changes

We keep our privacy policy under regular review. This version was last updated on September 2023. Historic versions can be obtained by contacting the DPO.

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.

Third-party links

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.

Your mobile information will not be shared with third parties/affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. All the above categories exclude text messaging originator opt-in data and consent; this information will not be shared with any third parties.

2. The data we collect about you

Types of data

So we can provide you with work-finding services we collect your personal data (which may include special categories of personal data). This includes for example, contacting you about job opportunities, assessing your suitability for those opportunities, updating our databases, putting you forward for job opportunities, arranging payments to you and developing and managing our services and relationship with you and our clients.

In some cases we may be required to use your data for the purpose of investigating, reporting and detecting crime and also to comply with laws that apply to us. We may also use your information during the course of internal audits to demonstrate our compliance with certain industry standards.

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

Special category data includes data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, and genetic data, biometric data, data concerning health or data concerning a person's sex life or sexual orientation. Don’t worry we don’t collect all of this and explain below what information we do need in order to provide work-finding services.

Criminal offence data where you are applying for a role that works with certain categories of people, particularly vulnerable people, we may collect data following a DBS or enhanced DBS check.

Categories of personal data

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:

• Identity Data includes first name, maiden name, last name, title, date of birth and gender if you provide it to us as part of your CV. In order to comply with our legal and contractual obligations in providing recruitment services we also collect nationality, “Right to Work” identification and visa information.
• Contact Data includes address, email address and telephone numbers.
• Financial Data includes your bank account details so that we can make payment to you where you are a temporary or agency worker.
• Work History includes your CV, education, work history, qualifications/accreditations, courses undertaken, references and any other information you think it is useful to provide to us so we can provide the work-finding services. In some roles we may also need you to declare to us any prior investigations or complaints made against you. We will ask you for this information if it is required.
• Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.

We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data could be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data will not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your data with others to calculate the percentage of people accessing certain roles or a specific website feature. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy policy.

Categories of special category and criminal offence data

We don’t collect this information without reason and we ask you to agree when we collect it. We are very protective of all the data that people share with us but particularly these categories because we know how important they are to people:

• Criminal Offence Data where it is required for a role, and permitted by law, we may collect the information contained in a DBS or enhanced DBS check.

• Health Data includes details of any disability that may impact your ability to fulfil a role or that you want us to know about so appropriate adjustments can be made. Certain in the healthcare sector will require confirmation of vaccinations.

• Trade Union membership includes the British Medical Association, Royal College of Nursing, The Social Workers Union, Unite, UNISON.

If you fail to provide personal data

Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you, and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able provide you with work-finding services.

Client Data

This section applies where you are an individual working for an employer that we provide recruitment services to. We need to collect and process information about you, or individuals at your organisation, in order to provide you with our recruitment services. These include (without limitation); finding a suitable pool of candidates for your vacancies, providing you with a Managed Service Provider (“MSP”) programme directly or through another organisation, providing you with Recruitment Process Outsourcing (“RPO”) services directly or through another organisation, to provide you with market relevant information, or to source potential opportunities from you as part of our recruitment services.

The information we collect – The information we collect about our clients is very minimal and is generally only to ensure our relationship and the services we provide run smoothly, or to comply with our legal requirements. These include (but are not limited to) retaining records of our dealings where appropriate to ensure compliance with our contractual obligations, to address any query regarding legal claims, to assess suitability to contact you regarding potential opportunities and/or our services, and to ensure compliance with this privacy notice.

3. How is your personal data collected?

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

Direct interactions. You may give us your data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:

• apply for a role when completing applications or registration forms;
• share with us documents such as your ID, CV or DBS certificates;
• create an account on our website to register for roles; or
• give us feedback or contact us.

Job boards. We may collect your data from them from another source such as a jobs board and sites such as LinkedIn. Where we do; we do so in line with the permissions you have given to those job boards and sites

Third parties. These include:

• your referees to verify the information you have given us regarding your work history and performance;
• our clients particularly if you are engaged on a temporary placement;
• other recruitment businesses may pass your details to us;
• your might be referred to us through a referral scheme by someone you know or have worked with; and
• government organisations when performing right to work or DBS checks.

Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we will automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies. Please see our cookie policy for further details.

4. How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

• Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
• Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
• Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.

Click here to find out more about the types of lawful basis that we will rely on to process your personal data.

If you are a candidate and register you information on our website then we use an automated process to ascertain the suitability of candidates matched against certain vacancies and assignments. If you do not wish us to process your date in this way then you can submit your details by email or telephone using the contact details on our website.

Generally, we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data although we will get your consent before collecting special category or criminal offence data, sending third party direct marketing communications to you via email or text message. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us.

Purposes for which we will use your personal data

We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.

Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

TABLE

Marketing

We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing and advertising. We have established the following personal data control mechanisms:

Promotional offers from us

We may use your Identity and Contact Data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you.

You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or have received work-find services from us and you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.

Third-party marketing

We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any third party outside of nGAGE Talent for marketing purposes.

Opting out

You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by logging into the website and checking or unchecking relevant boxes to adjust your marketing preferences, by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you or by contacting us at any time.
Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not apply to personal data provided to us as a result of work-finding services.

Cookies

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see Cookies & Data Processing Policy.

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.

If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

5. Disclosures of your personal data

We may share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table, Purposes for which we will use your personal data, above.

• Internal Third Parties as set out in the Glossary.
• External Third Parties as set out in the Glossary.
• Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy policy.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

Where we provide your personal data to clients in the course or provide working-services the client is an independent data controller. If you want to understand the data, they collect and process you will need to contact them directly or review their own privacy policy. You will also need to contact them directly if you want to rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data.

6. International transfers

We share your personal data within nGAGE Talent. This may involve transferring your data outside the UK.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

• We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data.
• Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved for use in the UK which give personal data the same protection it has in the UK.

Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the UK.

7. Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors, clients and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

8. Data retention

How long will you use my personal data for?

We will retain your information for a period of two years from our last point of meaningful contact with you. Meaningful contact for us is where you have actively communicated, either verbally or in writing, with us in relation to our work-finding services. As a candidate this may include any communication where you express interest in the potential roles we are working on, or where you have provided us with an updated version of your CV in relation to these roles.

By law we are required to hold records of the services we provide in order to comply with our legal obligations and/or contractual obligations. These include (without limitation):

• 12 months from the date we last provided our recruitment services to you, under the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Business Regulations, 2003, or for as long as necessary in the case of references.
• 2 years from the time the working time records were created.
• 2 years after employment or engagement has ended, for records relating to right to work in the UK.
• 3 years after the end of the pay reference period following the one that the records cover (National Minimum Wage Act 1998)
• 3 years from the end of the tax year to which it relates, for statutory maternity, paternity, adoption pay.
• 6 years from the end of each tax year for the purpose of retaining payroll records under the Income Tax (Employment and Pensions) Act 2003.
• 6 years (5 in Scotland) in order to show the national minimum wage rates were applied, in order to deal with any breach of contract claim.
• 6 years in order to deal with any civil action in the form of contractual claim (Limitation Act 1980) (5 years in Scotland).
• 6 years except for opt out notices which should be kept for 4 years, for pension auto-enrolment data.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see your legal rights below for further information.

In some circumstances we will anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

9. Your legal rights

You have the right to:

Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.

Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.

Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios:

• If you want us to establish the data's accuracy.
• Where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it.
• Where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
• You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.

Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us.

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Time limit to respond

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

10. Glossary

LAWFUL BASIS

Legitimate Interest means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service/product and the best and most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us.

Performance of Contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.

Comply with a legal obligation means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation that we are subject to.

THIRD PARTIES

Internal Third Parties

Other companies in the nGAGE Talent acting as joint controllers or processors.

External Third Parties

• Service providers acting as processors based India, Poland, South Africa and Mexico who provide administration services.
• Service providers acting as processors based in UK who provide IT, marketing and system administration services (including those who provide payroll calculation services, automated email communications and applicant tracking).
• Employers and/or agents of record, also known as umbrella companies in the UK, where you are employed or engaged by a third party.
• Professional advisers acting as processors or independent controllers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers based in UK, Eire, USA, Germany, Netherlands, Poland and Australia who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.
• HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities acting as processors or independent controllers based in the United Kingdom who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
• Criminal Agency/Disclosure Barring Service acting as processors or independent controllers based in the United Kingdom
• Government and professional advisors in relation to Visas and Immigration primarily in UK, Eire, USA, Germany, Netherlands, Poland and Australia
• An identity service provider (IDSP), currently we use Trust ID, acting as processors or joint controllers for the purpose of identity verification in UK, Eire, USA, Germany, Netherlands, Poland and Australia.
• Clients acting as independent data controllers primarily in UK, Eire, USA, Germany, Netherlands, Poland and Australia.
• Managed Service Providers (“MSPs”) or Recruitment Process Outsourcing services (“RPOs”) – acting as independent data controllers where we outsource, or their clients outsource to them, the recruitment function primarily in UK, Eire, USA, Germany, Netherlands, Poland and Australia.
• Training providers acting as independent controllers where you are a temporary or agency worker in UK, Eire, USA, Germany, Netherlands, Poland and Australia
• Referees - acting as processors or independent controllers in the United Kingdom
• Occupational health service providers acting as independent controllers where a certificate of fitness from an occupational health provider prior to or during placement in work in the United Kingdom.