Employee engagement survey privacy notice

Who will own my data once I submit it?

Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council

Why do you need my information?

Purpose of collecting this data

Employee feedback is essential to ensure we constantly improve our employee offer, identify and act on any challenges, and increase employee engagement. Best practice clearly demonstrates that more engaged employees perform better, have lower absence levels, and are less likely to leave the Council as they feel more valued and trusted so have higher job satisfaction. Therefore, identifying areas to increase engagement throughout the Council will help to improve the councils performance, retention rates, and our employee experience/offer. To better support our employees, having an understanding of their experience overall as well as by various workforce demographics (in an anonymised way) to improve engagement levels and, ultimately, levels of psychological safety and retention across the workforce. This intelligence will form an essential part of our Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) and People Strategy, as well as being common practice amongst other Local Authorities when driving employee engagement.

To do all of this we need a mechanism to hear our employees voice and opinions. An employee survey allows us to do this in a quick, easy, and anonymised way.

Why we need to collect data, and what will it be used for

Personal identifiable data such as name or email is not collected, however, there is a risk that employees may be inadvertently identified if there are low numbers of employees with a protected characteristic within a specific service area. To mitigate this risk, steps will be taken to ensure access to the raw data is restricted to senior managers within Workforce Development, which will be held on a restricted site. The data will not be filtered by more than one question or published if the responses are less than 10 to ensure the data remains anonymous.

We will use questions on a scale from never to always. The topics which will be asked are within the categories below:

• My work
• Organisational values and objectives
• Leadership
• My manager
• My wellbeing
• My team
• Learning and development
• Communication
• Celebrating diversity
• Raising concerns

The data we collect will be answers to these questions. Answers to these questions will allow us to achieve our purpose by:

1. Assessing engagement levels across the council
2. Identifying areas that are working well and where there is a need for improvement

We will also collect demographic data by having employees select the option that applies to them. It is voluntary for employees to share this information with us. Employees can choose to share the following information:

• Age group
• Sex
• Gender identity
• Race/ ethnicity
• Sexual orientation
• Disability
• Religion
• Are you care experienced/ have you ever spent time in the care system?
• Do you have caring responsibilities?

Employees will be encouraged to complete the survey, but they will not be mandated to do so. Employees analysing the data will not be able to see emails or names. Data will only be published if more than 10 responses are in that category (this is in line with best practice and to ensure anonymity).

In addition, we may also use your data to support Council recruitment, which means survey feedback/analysed data may be used to support recruitment campaigns and job adverts for roles at Knowsley Council.

What allows you to use my information?

The lawful basis for processing the data is:

• Article 6 (1) (e) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) states that processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest.
• Article 9 (2) (b) of the UK GDPR states that processing is necessary to carry out the obligations and exercise specific rights of the controller or the data subject in the field of employment.
• Article 9 (2) (g) of the UK GDPR states that processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest.

The relevant lawful conditions for processing under the Data Protection Act 2018 are as follows:

• Schedule 1, part 2 (8). Equality of opportunity or treatment
• Schedule 1, part 1 (1). Employment, social security or social protection

The legislation underpinning this is the Equality Act 2010. The public sector equality duty is a duty on public authorities to consider, or think about, how their policies or decisions affect people who are protected under the Equality Act. Therefore, as a council, we have a public duty to consider the welfare of employees with protected characteristics. As an organisation it is best practice to collect employee demographics to use for equality and diversity planning. The employee survey will allow all staff, including those with protected characteristics, to share their views. This will strengthen the fulfilment of our duties under this act because it allows us to better understand the experience at work of these employees, both what is working well and what can be improved, and how the experience across the different protected characteristic groups compares to the organisation overall (where there are more than 10 responses).

Who will my information be shared with?

Data will be analysed by a small human resources team.

Results will be published for each question, but only If a question has more than 10 responses. All data will be shared anonymously. This data will be shared with all employees and may be used for recruitment/ employer branding purposes through our online channels, such as social media and websites.

Do I have to provide this information, and what will happen if I don’t?

These surveys are voluntary, and there are no consequences of failing to provide demographic data or completing the survey. In the demographic data staff will be asked to share if they wish to complete the survey, there will be an option under each demographic question to put/select ‘prefer not to say’.

If staff don’t provide this information, we may not be able to understand the experience of all staff across different demographic groups compared to the organisation overall and, therefore, may not be able to take the action needed to improve this, where needed. The experience of employees may not improve and, therefore, retention rates may decline, and we may struggle to attract and retain staff.

How long will you keep this data for and why?

Personal data is kept for no longer than reasonably necessary. Raw data generated from the employee survey will be kept for up to a year after the survey has taken place. The published data will not be personally identifiable as this data will be broken down by a minimum group of 10 people. This allows us sufficient time to re-analyse results if needed to and compare to future surveys. This published/analysed data will be kept indefinitely.

How will my information be stored?

Data will be stored on the Council’s secure IT systems and on restricted sites. Surveys submitted in paper form will be input into Microsoft Forms by the HR Team before being placed in confidential waste.

Will this information be used to take automated decisions about me?

No

Will my data be transferred abroad, and why?

No

What rights do I have when it comes to my data?

Under the UK  GDPR, you have the following rights with regard to your personal data: -

• The right to subject access – you have the right to see a copy of the personal data that the council holds about you and find out what it is used for.
• The right to rectification – you have the right to ask the council to correct or remove any inaccurate data that we hold about you.
• The right to erasure (right to be forgotten) you have the right to ask the council to remove data that we hold about you.
• The right to restriction – you have the right to ask for your information to be restricted (locked down) on council systems.
• The right to data portability – you have the right to ask for your data to be transferred back to you or to a new provider at your request.
• The right to object – you have the right to ask the council to stop using your personal data or to stop sending you marketing information or complaining about how your data is used.
• The right to prevent automated decision-making – you have the right to ask the council to stop using your data to make automated decisions about you or to stop profiling your behaviour (where applicable).

To find out more about your rights under the DPA 2018/UK GDPR, please visit the Information Commissioner’s website.

To request a copy of your data or ask questions about how it is used, please download a copy of our form and send it to: -

Data Protection Officer
Knowsley Council
Nutgrove Villa
Westmorland Road
L36 6GA

Or email: Inforights@knowsley.gov.uk

Who can I complain to if I am unhappy about how my data is used? 

You can complain directly to the Council’s Data Protection Team by writing to: -

Data Protection Officer
Knowsley Council
Nutgrove Villa
Westmorland Road
L36 6GA

Or email: data.protection.officer@knowsley.gov.uk

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office using the following details:-

The Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Telephone: 08456 30 60 60 or 01625 54 57 45

Website: www.ico.org.uk