Staff privacy notice

When your business employs people you will need to process certain information about them, and this will include some of their personal data. For example, you are likely to need to collect and store their contact details, right to work information, payroll information and other HR records (eg appraisal information).

You should use this template before you take on any staff to create a staff privacy notice for your business. This will allow you to be transparent with your staff about what information about them you will be collecting during the course of their employment by you, what you will be doing with it and how long you intend to keep it for.

Make sure you keep your notice updated if you change the way you collect or use personal data about your staff.

This staff privacy notice provides all of the key information you need to provide to your staff about your use of their personal data in a digestible and transparent way. Key terms include:

• a statement of your business’s commitment to data protection;

• how any requests for consent to process personal data will be made;

• under what circumstances your business may share personal data with third parties;

• what privacy rights your staff have; and

• what personal data you collect, including why you collect it, what your lawful basis is for processing it and how long you will keep it for.

Whenever your business collects a staff member’s personal data, in order to comply with your data protection obligations, you must provide that staff member with certain privacy information when you collect their data. This is a legal requirement and you could face serious fines if you don’t comply.

Although the information doesn’t need to be set out in a staff privacy notice, it’s often easier for your business to set it all out together in one place, which you can signpost your staff to. It’s possible to produce this template as a standalone notice, or one to slot into a pre-existing staff handbook. If you’re looking to create an entire staff handbook, including a staff privacy notice, use our template staff handbook instead.

It’s also important for your staff privacy information to be written in a style and format that your staff can easily digest; this notice will help you to do that.

For guidance about your data protection obligations when you are processing staff personal data, see our Q&A on records and staff data.

For general guidance about what HR policies you should put in place before taking on any staff, see HR policies

If you're looking for a privacy notice you can use for recruitment purposes rather than one for current staff, see our template staff recruitment privacy notice.