Privacy notice: Occupational health

This notice sets out important information on how Goldsmiths collects and uses occupational health data relating to its current, prospective and former employees.

Goldsmiths collects, processes and holds personal data relating to its current, prospective and former employees to fulfil its legal and regulatory responsibilities regarding occupational health and safety and to ensure the wellbeing of all its staff.

This notice explains how we will collect, use and share your personal data and should be read alongside our general privacy information and staff privacy notice.

The purpose of processing your personal data

Goldsmiths will process your personal data for the following purposes:

• To assess your health and your fitness to work and to identify a baseline of your health against which to measure any future changes
• To provide advice to your manager(s) on fitness for work and any adjustments that would help you to do your work
• To identify any additional support that would help you to improve your health
• To identify health trends within the College to enable targeted health and wellbeing strategies
• To enable the College to meet its obligations under health and safety laws and regulations

The legal basis for processing your data

In this instance, the lawful basis Goldsmiths relies on for processing your personal data is that processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which Goldsmiths is subject. It is also necessary to process your data in order to enable you to comply with your contract of employment.

We will process special category data for the purposes of preventative or occupational medicine, for the assessment of the working capacity of the employee, medical diagnosis, the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems and services.

The personal data that is collected and processed

The data collected and processed may include:

• Personal Information, e.g. Name, Address, Date of birth, National Insurance number
• Personal Characteristics, e.g. ethnicity and gender
• Contact details, e.g. telephone number and email address
• GP and/or health specialist contact details
• Past and present occupational job roles and occupational exposure
• Health information that would be classed as ‘special category data’
• Details of medical investigations and biological testing

Where your personal data is collected from

Your personal data is collected from the following sources:

• You (the data subject) – you provide data through forms completed by you at the start of or during employment, correspondence with the College, meetings or other assessments
• Third parties – the College may obtain data from health specialists or services that we may refer you to as part of our assessment process and, with your consent, from your GP or other specialists from whom you have received treatment

Sharing your personal data with others

Information on your fitness to work is shared with your line manager, department safety officers and HR with your consent, however where withholding this information could impact on your health and safety and the health and safety of others, information on your fitness to work will be provided to management and to HR without your consent.

In cases where we are unable to gain your consent, or where your consent is withheld and we need to share information anyway, you will always be informed.

The College will share your personal data, including special category data, with any organisation that may be contracted by the College to provide occupational health services.

Where the College engages third parties to process personal data on its behalf a UK GDPR compliant contract will be in place which will include our instructions on how data will be processed.

Information will be shared with USS or the LGPS pension scheme in relation to ill health retirement applications.

Retaining your personal data

All personal data will be retained by Goldsmiths for the duration of your employment with the College and for 6 years following your leaving date. We will only continue to retain your personal data after such time if we have a lawful basis to do so.

Where occupational health service providers act as Data Controllers in their own right they will retain your personal data in line with recommendations for best practice in the field of occupational health.

Where Goldsmiths changes occupational health service provider your information will be transferred to a new provider or returned to Goldsmiths.

Securing your personal data

Your personal data is held by:

• Third-party organisations contracted by the College to provide occupational health services. Third parties are under a duty of confidentiality and obliged to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of data
• Goldsmiths staff processing the data are under a duty of confidentiality and receive relevant training on data protection and information security

Your rights

Privacy legislation gives you have a number of rights to decide how your personal data is collected and processed. Details of these are contained within the general information on our website.

See general privacy information on how we process personal data and other privacy notices.

Further information regarding your rights as an individual is available from the Information Commissioners website.

You have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office about the way Goldsmiths processes your personal data. Details on how to complain can be found on the Office’s website.

Changes to this notice

This notice was last updated in September 2021. It is advised that you check here regularly as this notice may be amended or updated at any time.

Contact details

Should you have any concern about your personal data at Goldsmiths please contact the Data Protection Officer by email via: dp (@gold.ac.uk).