Candidate & Employee Privacy Policy - Canada

Specsavers is committed to ensuring your personal information is protected and secure.

This privacy notice describes how we collect and use personal information about you before, during and after your working relationship with us, in accordance with the applicable privacy legislation. This notice applies to candidates, current and former employees, workers, and contractors.

1. About Specsavers

The members of the Specsavers group of stores, support offices and companies (hereafter referred to as “we,” “us” or “Specsavers”) are joint “custodians” of your personal information. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you and provide you with an overview of this.

2. What personal information is collected

We may collect and process the following information about you:

Personal contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, and personal email addresses.
Date of birth.
Gender.
Copy of driving licence
Marital status and dependants.
Next of kin and emergency contact information.
National identification number, social security number or its equivalent.
Bank account details, salary and payroll records and tax status information.
Nationality and information relating to your immigration status.
Recruitment information (including copies of right to work documentation, references and other information included in a resume or cover letter or as part of the application- and recruitment process).
Information about criminal convictions and offences and information gathered when undertaken background checks (if appropriate given the nature of the role and where we are legally able to do so).
Employment records (including job titles, work history, location of employment or workplace, working hours, holidays, training records and professional memberships, reason for leaving).
Annual leave, pension, and benefits information.
Performance information including appraisals and performance review.
Disciplinary and grievance information.
Information about your health, including any medical condition, health, and sickness records where this is related to your work.
Information about your use of our information and communications systems which will include information about the devices you use including mobile devices, location, browser, messaging systems, communications history, and IP address.
CCTV footage and other information obtained through electronic means such as your security pass.
Photographs for an identity card or in marketing or promotional materials.

This information will primarily be collected from you, but we may also collect it from other sources where it is lawful to do so as part of the recruitment/employment.

3. Limiting Purpose and Consent

We’ll use the information you provide during the recruitment process to progress your application with a view to offering you an employment contract with us.

After employment information will be used for purposes of managing your employment with us and for us to fulfil our legal and regulatory requirements.

We will always, except in some very limited circumstances, ask for your consent to process and share your information prior to you providing it to Specsavers. Where possible and appropriate we will ask for explicit consent prior to commencing any interaction involving the processing of personal data, however in some circumstances we will base our processing on your implicit consent. If we do this, it will only be when the processing is obvious and does not prejudice your rights and freedoms.

When consent is explicit it could be oral, written, or electronic – the method of giving the consent does not affect your rights or the protections we will put in place to ensure your data is processed appropriately.

You can withdraw your consent at any time, and we will, as far as regulatory and statutory guidance allows, comply with your request. It maybe that withdrawing your consent affects Specsavers, but we will inform you of this prior to processing your request. Outside of PIPA and PIPEDA, there is guidance regarding the retention of medical and employment records, which may limit our ability to delete all customer data, but we will inform you of this as soon as possible.

4. Protecting personal information

We use a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your personal information from unauthorised access and use.

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

5. Sharing your personal information

We may have to share your personal information with other entities in the Specsavers group, third parties, including third-party service providers for example those who support our IT and communications system such as Microsoft as well as third party providers of our People Management Systems for the purposes to simplify and manage our people processes. In this case we will enter into a contract which obliges third parties to protect personal information in accordance with relevant privacy legislation.

We may transfer your personal information to countries outside of Canada. If we do, we will ensure an appropriate safeguard is in place and additional security measures are employed to protect your personal information.

6. How long is the information kept for

Personal information will be retained by Specsavers no longer than is necessary however we may be required by law (for example tax laws) to retain your personal information for a certain period.

7. Your rights regarding your personal information

You have the right to request access and a copy of any of the personal information we hold about you. If you would like to access your information, you can contact us via our online webform, and we will facilitate any inquiries. Our privacy policy, which is available on our website sets out the types of companies and organisations we share information with and the reasons we may process your information.

When requesting your information, we will ask that you confirm your identity by providing your name, address, and D.O.B and in some circumstances may be required to charge a minimal fee. We will tell you if this is the case as soon impossible during your application and will never leave you owing Specsavers for information provided. We will provide all information within 30 days (unless there is an extension provided by PIPA or PIPEDA) and will respond to you in writing. If there is any information we cannot or are not allowed to release, we will let you know as soon as possible.

You also have the right to correct your information which you can do so by contacting the HR team at enquir******@**ecsavers.com

If you have queries or concerns regarding the processing of your personal information or in relation to this policy, please contact us at any time at datapro*******@**ecsavers.com.

8. Where to find this privacy notice including updates

This privacy notice does not form part of any contract of employment or other contract to provide services.

It is important that you read this notice, together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information and what your rights are under the privacy legislation.

9. Contact us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact data protection team via datapro*******@**ecsavers.com or write to our Data Protection Officer at our Legal Department, Specsavers Optical Group, La Villiaze, St Andrews, Guernsey, GY6 8YP

Last edited May 2022