As part of any recruitment process, SSE collects and processes personal data relating to potential and actual job applicants. SSE is committed to being transparent about how it collects and uses that data and to meeting its data protection obligations.
What personal data do we collect?
SSE collects a range of information about applicants during the recruitment process. This may include:
- Your name, address and contact details, including email address and telephone number;
- Details of your qualifications, skills, experience and employment history;
- Information regarding your employment preferences to enable us to share jobs that may be of interest to you, via email
- Information about your current level of remuneration, including benefit entitlements;
- Whether you have a disability for which SSE needs to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process;
- Information about your entitlement to work in the UK and Ireland.
- Special categories of data such as gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and community background; and
- Additional information such as national insurance number and bank details, but only if you successfully secure an offer of employment with SSE.
SSE may collect this information in a variety of ways. For example, data might be contained in application forms, CVs or resumes, on-line recruitment tools, obtained from your passport or other identity documents or collected through interviews or other forms of assessment.
We may also collect personal data about you from third parties, such as references supplied by former employers. We will seek information from third parties only once a job offer to you has been made and will inform you that we are doing so.
Data will be stored in a range of different places, including on your application record, in recruitment and Human Resource (“HR”) management systems and on other Information Technology (“IT”) systems (including email).
Why does SSE process personal data?
We need to process data to take steps as part of the recruitment process, prior to entering a contract with you. We may also need to process your data to enter into a contract with you if you are successful in your application for employment.
In some cases, we need to process data to ensure that we are complying with our legal obligations. For example, it is mandatory to check a successful applicant's eligibility to work in the UK and Ireland before employment starts.
SSE has a legitimate interest in processing personal data during the recruitment process and for keeping records of the process. Processing data from job applicants allows us to manage the recruitment process, assess and confirm a candidate's suitability for employment and decide to whom to offer a job. We may also need to process data from job applicants to respond to and defend legal claims.
SSE may also process special categories of data, such as information about gender, ethnic origin, sexual orientation or religion or belief. This information is captured and shared anonymously internally in order to monitor diversity throughout the recruitment process, and externally to fulfil legal reporting requirements e.g. Gender Pay Gap reporting, reporting to the NI Equalities Commission, etc.
During the process, we may also capture some sensitive personal data about you (e.g. disability information). We do this in order to make reasonable adjustments to enable our job applicants to apply for jobs with us, to be able to take online/telephone assessments, to attend interviews/assessment centres, to prepare for starting at SSE (if successful) and to ensure that we comply with regulatory obligations placed on us with regards to recruitment.
How is your personal data transferred outside of the EEA?
We, or a third party who we share personal information with, may host, store and handle that personal information outside of the European Economic Area (EEA).
We will only permit this to happen if adequate safeguards have been put in place to protect your personal information. This means that we will:
(a) ensure that the country in which your personal information will be handled has been deemed "adequate" by the European Commission under Article 45 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR);
(b) include standard data protection clauses approved by the European Commission for transferring personal information outside the EEA into our contracts with those third parties (these are the clauses approved under Article 46.2 of the GDPR); or
(c) (in the case of transfers from the EEA to the USA), ensure that the recipient of the personal information is certified with the US-EU Privacy Shield Framework, as permitted by Article 46.2 of the GPDR.
Who has access to personal data?
Your information may be shared internally for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. This includes members of the HR and recruitment team, interviewers/assessors involved in the recruitment process, managers in the business area with a vacancy and IT staff if access to the data is necessary for the performance of their roles.
We will not share your data with third parties, unless your application for employment is successful and we make you an offer of employment. We will then share your data with former employers to obtain references for you and other third parties as part of the pre-employment screening process. This may include: academic institutions, credit reference agencies, occupational health service providers, criminal records bureaus and the DVLA. We may also share your information with third party suppliers who carry out pre-employment screening on our behalf. We will always ask for your consent before processing this type of data as part of pre-employment screening. SSE has developed a Statement on Criminal Convictions providing fair and clear guidance regarding the handling of criminal convictions in relation to preemployment checks.
How does SSE protect personal data?
We take the security of your data seriously. We have internal policies and controls in place to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by our employees or authorised third parties in the proper performance of their duties.
For how long does SSE keep personal data?
SSE will hold your data on file for two years from the date of your initial application for a specific vacancy. For the purposes of job alerts only, your details will be stored for two years from the date of your initial registration for the job alerts service. In both cases, at the end of that period, we will delete your personal data (including any documents you have uploaded, online testing you have undertaken, or any other information associated with this specific application) from our systems if we have not had any further meaningful contact with you (or, where appropriate, the company you are working for or with.) During this time, you will receive job alerts based on your selections, and our recruitment team may contact you to highlight other roles which may be of interest to you. You can stop these communications at any time by closing your candidate account. If we have had further meaningful contact with you, your personal data will be kept for two years from this point (or for such longer period as we believe in good faith that the law or relevant regulators require us to preserve your data). After this period, it is likely your data will no longer be relevant for the purposes for which it was collected.
For those job applicants, whose services are provided via a third-party company or other entity, "meaningful contact" with you means meaningful contact with the company or entity which supplies your services. Where we are notified by such company or entity that it no longer has that relationship with you, we will retain your data for no longer than two years from the point your application was submitted by the third party or for the period of two years from the point we subsequently have meaningful contact directly with you.
When we refer to "meaningful contact", we mean, for example, communication between us (either verbal or written), or where you are actively engaging with our online services. If you are a candidate, we will consider there to be meaningful contact with you if you submit your updated CV onto our website for an alternative role. We will also consider it meaningful contact if you communicate with us about potential roles, either by verbal or written communication or click through from any of our marketing communications.
SSE will hold all interview notes and documentation that we collate from you during the recruitment interview and/or assessment stages for 6 months. SSE will transfer relevant data for all successful job applicants to our HR systems. The period for which your data will be held should you become an employee will be provided to you in the privacy notice for employees.
You are able to delete your Account from our Applicant Tracking System (ATS) at any time by logging into your Applicant Profile, clicking on Account and then selecting “Remove Account”.
