Privacy notice

An account is required in order to apply. We hold your email address and a record of whether it has been confirmed. We do not store your password. The authentication system holds a one-way cryptographic hash, which cannot be reversed.

Your profile is completed once and reused for each application. It contains the following:

• Your first name and last name, your preferred title, and your pronouns if you provide them.
• Your telephone number and email address.
• Your address: street, town or city, county, postcode and country.
• Your education, if you choose to provide it: the type of institution (secondary school, college or further education, university), its name, the dates of attendance, and the qualifications and grades obtained. Education is optional and may be left blank without affecting your application.
• Short courses and other training: the provider, the course name, and the dates.
• Your employment history: each employer’s name and address, the position held, the dates, an outline of your duties, and your reason for leaving.
• Your referees: name, email address, postal address, telephone number if provided, how they know you, whether they are your most recent employer, and whether we may approach them if you are shortlisted.
• A CV, if you choose to upload one.

Each application asks a short set of questions, since the substantive information is held in your profile. Depending on the post, these are:

• Your availability to start.
• Whether you wish to be considered for a job share.
• Whether you require permission to work in the UK.
• Any adjustments you require in order to take part in the recruitment process.
• Where you saw the post advertised.
• Whether you hold a full current driving licence and have use of a vehicle. Asked only where driving is an essential requirement of the post.
• Whether you have previously been dismissed by an employer and, if so, the circumstances.
• Any explanation you wish to give of gaps in your employment history.
• Relevant experience gained otherwise than in paid employment.
• A declaration of criminal convictions and cautions. See section 5.
• Your supporting statement.

Information provided in the adjustments field is used only to make arrangements for your participation in the recruitment process. It forms no part of the selection decision and is not disclosed to the panel scoring your application.

Where you are invited to interview, the system compares the dates in your employment history and identifies to the panel any gap exceeding two months, together with any explanation you have provided. This is a safer recruitment measure: unexplained gaps must be explored at interview, and identifying them by inspection is unreliable. The prompt exists to enable a conversation rather than to count against you, and it is not disclosed during shortlisting.

We keep a record of each application and its progress: its status, the scores and written assessments recorded by those who assessed it, any interviews arranged and their outcome, the correspondence sent to you by the system, and any offer made, including the terms offered and whether it was accepted. Offers of employment are executed electronically.

Where we take up references, we hold the referee’s name, email address, organisation, job title and relationship to you, together with the content of the reference. References are taken up for candidates we propose to appoint, and only in respect of referees you have authorised us to approach, save that safer recruitment requires us to approach your most recent employer.

Unity maintains a security log. It records sign-ins, failed sign-in attempts, password changes and administrative actions, together with the time, the IP address from which the request originated, and the browser and device used. Certain of these records retain a truncated IP address rather than the full address.

Information about your ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, religion or belief, and whether your gender corresponds to the sex registered at birth, is special category data within the meaning of Article 9 of the UK GDPR. It attracts additional protection, and we process it only with your explicit consent, given by the confirmation on the form and recorded with the date and the wording consented to. Section 8 states the conditions relied on.

Hiring managers and panel members have no access to equality monitoring answers at any stage: not at shortlisting, at interview, at offer, or subsequently. The answers are stored separately from your application, and the database will not disclose them other than to staff holding the relevant data protection permission.

Equality monitoring answers are not stored against your name or your account. They are held as a separate record: that an application was submitted for a given vacancy, on a given date, by a person who gave the answers recorded.

That record retains a reference to the application it accompanied, and does so only for as long as the application itself is retained. The reference exists so that we can establish whether applicants from any group are shortlisted or appointed at a different rate from others, which is the purpose of collecting the information. When the application is deleted at the end of its retention period, the reference is removed as part of that deletion, and what remains identifies no one.

It follows that we count applications rather than individuals. Three applications from the same person produce three sets of answers, because what we report is the composition of the applicant pool for each vacancy.

While your application is still held, your monitoring answers can be located, and you may request a copy of them or ask for them to be deleted. Once the application has been deleted at the end of its retention period, they can no longer be located: the reference has been removed, and neither we nor anyone else is able to determine which record was yours.

Draft answers saved against your profile are different. They are held against your account, may be amended by you at any time, and are deleted with the account.

Because the retained answers identify no one, they are kept indefinitely, so that year-on-year comparison remains possible.

• Your name, work email address, job title, team, contact number and profile photograph.
• Your start date and, on termination, your end date.
• Your line manager.
• Your role in the system and the individual permissions attached to your account, together with a permanent record of every change to those permissions, by whom it was made and for what reason.
• Any notes recorded against your record.

Staff sign in and out by presenting a phone to an NFC tag at a building entrance. Each tap records the member of staff, the building, the tag, whether the movement was an arrival or a departure, and the time. The time is recorded by the server and cannot be set from the device.

Where a member of staff does not sign out, an automated process at the end of the day closes the session and marks it as closed automatically rather than leaving it open. Corrections are made by recording an opposing entry, and never by amending or deleting the original, so that the register reflects what occurred.

Where you elect to have a device remembered so that you need not sign in on each occasion, the system stores a hashed token, a label by which you can identify the handset, and the date of last use. The token itself is disclosed to the device once and is not stored. A remembered device ceases to function 30 days after its last use, and each use extends that period to a further 30 days.

Any member of staff may see who is on site at the present time. Searching historical sign-in records and exporting the register require a specific permission.

Sign-in records are not used in relation to pay. Your pay is not calculated from them, and they are not checked against your hours.

They may, however, be used in attendance management or performance processes where a concern about a member of staff has already been raised, and in that case they are considered as part of the relevant HR process. We tell you this plainly because it is the sort of use you would not otherwise expect from a record whose stated purpose is knowing who is in a building. They are not consulted routinely, and not as a matter of course in supervision or appraisal.

Where you are appointed, we hold the pre-employment checks required by law and by safer recruitment: evidence of your right to work in the UK, photographic identification, proof of current address, evidence of any change of name, the DBS and barred list checks described in section 5, your National Insurance number, and your P45 or starter declaration. Most of these require a document to be uploaded, and that document is retained in the system.

Unity records administrative actions taken within it, including the approval of a vacancy, changes to another person’s permissions, the scoring of an application and the handling of a data rights request. These records exist so that decisions affecting candidates can be accounted for, and they cannot be amended or deleted. Access to a record is not itself logged, so we are able to identify who has acted on your application but not who has viewed it.

If you are signed in, you may obtain a copy of your information from Settings by selecting Export my data. The file is produced immediately and contains your account, your profile, your education, employment, courses and referees, and your applications, interviews and offers. It is provided in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format, which also gives effect to your right to data portability under Article 20.

The export does not include your equality monitoring answers, to which neither you nor the export has access. To obtain those, or anything else not covered by the export, you may make a request using our data request form. An account is not required in order to use the form, and it may be used by a person acting on your behalf.

Most information may be corrected by you directly, by editing your profile or your staff record. Where information is inaccurate and cannot be edited by you, such as a note recorded by another person, please email enquiries@croydondropin.org.uk stating what is inaccurate and what it should say.

If you are signed in, you may delete your account from Settings by selecting Delete account. Confirmation in writing is required before deletion proceeds. The effect of deletion is set out below, since not all information is erased.

Deleted in full:

• Your profile and its contents: education, employment, courses and referees.
• Your uploaded CV.
• Any application commenced but not submitted. A draft has not been read and no decision has been taken on it, so there is nothing to be accounted for.
• Your draft equality monitoring answers.
• Your staff profile and profile photograph, where applicable.

Retained, with your name and contact details removed:

• Applications you have submitted, together with any associated interviews and offers. Submission is what makes an application a record: from that point it may be acted upon, and the basis on which it was decided must remain capable of being accounted for. Your first name, last name and email address are replaced, and the free text you provided is removed, including your supporting statement, your explanation of any employment gaps, your account of any dismissal, your description of other experience, anything written in relation to a criminal record, and any adjustments requested. The fact that an application was made, that a declaration was given, and how the application was determined, is retained.
• Your account record, with the display name and email address replaced.

Retained unchanged:

• Any equality monitoring answers given. These are retained, and the reference linking them to your application is removed when that application is deleted, after which they cannot be identified as yours. See section 4.3.
• Security logs and records of administrative actions. These identify accounts by internal reference rather than by name.

Before you confirm deletion, the system states how many applications, interviews and offers are held, so that the effect is known in advance, and confirms that equality monitoring answers are retained and cease to be linked to you when the application is deleted. The deletion is itself recorded, including any information that could not be removed.

On-site sign-in records are deliberately not linked to your account by a database reference, so that deletion of an account is not prevented by the register. Those records expire on the 90-day cycle described in section 10.

Where we rely on legitimate interests, you may object under Article 21, and we must cease processing unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds which override your interests, rights and freedoms. You may also request that processing be restricted under Article 18 while a dispute as to accuracy, or an objection, is resolved. Please email enquiries@croydondropin.org.uk.

We rely on consent for two purposes only: equality monitoring and non-essential cookies. You may amend or clear the monitoring answers saved against your profile, and change your cookie preferences, at any time. Answers given with a submitted application may be withdrawn while that application is retained, but not afterwards, since at that point nothing links them to you (section 4.3). Withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before withdrawal, and has no bearing on your application.