Privacy policy

Searson Buck Group Pty Ltd (ACN 626 465 512) and its subsidiaries and related bodies corporate (‘Searson Buck’, ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘our’) respect your privacy and the trust you place in us by providing us with your personal information.


This Privacy Policy describes the personal information we may obtain about you as well as how we collect, use, store, disclose and protect the security of your personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act), the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) and other applicable privacy laws, principles and regulations including the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR). This Statement applies to all workers of Searson Buck Group Pty Ltd (Searson Buck and Nurseline), including employees and on-hired employees, contractors etc. ‘Searson Buck’ means Searson Buck Group Pty Ltd.


We encourage you to read this Privacy Policy carefully so that you understand our commitment to you and your privacy. Should you have any questions about this policy or our privacy practices, please email us at privacy@searsonbuck.com.au.


Purpose

At Searson Buck we are committed to protecting your privacy and understand the importance of protecting your personal information. This statement outlines how Searson Buck collects and manages personal information in line with the requirements of the Privacy Act 1988 (the Act) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).


Statement

This privacy statement applies to the personal and sensitive information of Searson Buck’s (‘we’, ‘our’) candidates (including program participants), on-hired workers, clients, and website users, and extends to others who interact with us for purposes in line with our business offerings (‘you’).


Personal information includes information regarding your contact details, work experience, qualifications, aptitude test results, opinions about your work performance, incidents at the workplace, and other information obtained or received by us in connection with your possible and actual work placements.


Sensitive information is a special category of personal information. It is information or opinion about you, including membership of a professional or trade association, trade union or political association; criminal record; health information, racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs or affiliations, philosophical beliefs, or sexual preferences or practices.

As outlined in the Act, sensitive information can, in most cases, only be disclosed with your consent.


Candidates, On-hired Workers and Participants:
Collection

We may collect personal or sensitive information about you when:


  • You register, apply for or enquire about work-related opportunities and programs through us.
  • We receive a reference or results of enquiries that we make of your former employers, work colleagues, professional associations, or registration body.
  • We undertake or receive the results of any competency or medical assessment or any background checks, including educational, work rights, credit, or criminal record checks.
  • We receive any feedback, complaint, or other information from or about you in the workplace or otherwise.
  • We receive any information about any investigation, litigation, disciplinary matter, criminal matter, inquest, or inquiry in which you were involved.
  • We collect information about you from public domain sources or from relevant Government Agencies.


Purposes and use for which we collect personal information

Your personal and sensitive information may be used:


  • To contact you in relation to actual or prospective work placements.
  • To conduct suitability assessments for actual or prospective work placements based on but not limited to your skills, competencies, qualifications, experience, and overall health.
  • Undertaking checks to verify your work rights status, criminal history and any other background checks as required by our client or by law.
  • To confirm and process your actual or possible work placement.
  • To manage and resolve any complaint, inquiry, or investigation in which you are involved.
  • In connection with any workplace rehabilitation or insurance claim that requires disclosure of your personal or sensitive information.
  • Any other business purpose necessary to assist us in providing our services to you and to our clients or prospective clients.


If you do not give us the information we seek, we may be limited in our ability to identify suitable work related opportunities for you.


Disclosure

We may disclose your personal information for the purposes for which it is primarily held or for a related secondary purpose. In some cases, we may only disclose information with your consent as per the Act. Your personal and sensitive information may be disclosed to:


  • Potential and actual clients of Searson Buck, referees and trusted third parties.
  • External parties used in providing our services to you – e.g. online induction and training providers and background checking agencies checking criminal records, work rights, and credit status.
  • Third parties used by our clients as part of their recruitment, administration, screening, and selection processes.
  • Third parties who assist us by developing services and processes to optimise and improve the quality and efficiency of recruitment services.
  • Third party outsourced IT, including cloud-based storage providers, and document storage providers where we have an appropriate processing agreement (or similar protections) in place providing us with specialised and efficient database management, development, and storage.
  • Marketing technology platforms and suppliers who assist us with the provision of marketing communications to you, and customer feedback survey providers.
  • Third party contractors/service providers, job boards, job platforms, job aggregators, software providers and cloud-based databases for the purposes of assisting us to provide you with our services, and/or to improve the services we offer you.
  • Government agencies, law enforcement and regulators to comply with legal obligations.
  • Other business purposes as deemed necessary and in line with legislation to assist us in providing our services to you and to our clients or prospective clients.


Clients

If you are a Searson Buck client, we collect and use information about you, or individuals at your organisation, in the course of providing or offering you, our services.


The main types of information we collect and maintain about you as our client are:

  • Your contact details.
  • Details of your job title/description and organisational needs.
  • Records of our interaction with you and confidential feedback you may provide regarding your business’ operations, your recruitment needs or our candidates.


We use information about clients to enable us to facilitate business opportunities, introduce our services to you and to ensure that the contractual arrangements between us can properly be implemented. We also:

  • Store your details and records of our conversations on our database, so that we can contact you in relation to recruitment activities and targeted campaigns.
  • Undertake credit checks and customer satisfaction surveys.


Management of Information
Storing, management and protecting personal information

Safeguarding your information is important to us, whether you interact with us personally, by phone, mail, or online. We hold personal information in a combination of secure computer storage facilities and paper-based files and other records and take such steps as are reasonable in the circumstances to protect the personal information we hold from misuse, interference and loss, unauthorised access, modification, or disclosure.

We may maintain records for a significant period of time as per legislation. When we consider information is no longer needed, we will remove any details that will identify you or we will securely destroy the records.


We train our staff to respect the confidentiality of customer information and the privacy of individuals. Searson Buck take breaches of your privacy very seriously and any breach will result in disciplinary action being taken, dependent upon severity.

Searson Buck has appointed a Privacy Officer to ensure that our management of personal information is in accordance with this statement and the Privacy Act 1988.


How do we keep personal information accurate and up to date?

Searson Buck takes such steps as are reasonable in the circumstances to ensure that the personal information it holds and discloses is accurate, up to date, complete, relevant, and not misleading. Please advise your consultant via phone when your personal details change.


If you have created a profile with Searson Buck via our website, you are able to review and edit your personal information at any time by logging into your account and reviewing your profile.


You can delete your personal information by contacting the Privacy Officer. If you do choose to close your account with Searson Buck, Searson Buck may retain personal information as and where required by law.


Website
General information collected from visitors to our website

We gather information about our website users, such as what areas users visit more frequently and what services users access the most. We only use such data anonymously and, in the aggregate, to help us determine what is most beneficial for our users, and how we can create a better overall website experience.


Personal information collected on the website

In some instances, we may need specific information about you, such as name, address, email address, telephone number etc. We will collect this information if you apply for a job or register with us via our website.


We may also ask you for other information such as the types of jobs you are interested in, to provide you with the best possible service.


Cookies

Cookies are collected to record your navigation of our website so that when you revisit, we can provide tailored options to you such as advertising roles relevant to you. Cookies can also be used to analyse traffic and for advertising and marketing purposes.


Visitors to our website can check and change what type of cookies you accept by opting out on the website, or within your browser settings. Rejecting all cookies means that you may not be able to take full advantage of all our website's features. For more information generally on cookies please refer to www.aboutcookies.org


Enquiries, Complaints, Access, and Correction

You can make enquiries, requests to access/delete or correct your information, or complain about alleged breaches of the APPs to our Privacy Officer: Email : privacy@searsonbuck.com.au

Phone : 03 6223 3055


Complaints

We aim to acknowledge receipt of all complaints within 10 working days and to resolve all complaints within 30 working days. If it is not possible due to the contents of the complaint, we will respond to your complaint in a reasonable time.


If you are not satisfied with our response to your complaint, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.


Access

Subject to some exceptions that are set out in the Australian Privacy Principles you can gain access to the personal information that we hold about you.


To make a request to access your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer to request an application form. We will respond to your request within a reasonable period and compliance with any legal requirements and provide access to the information if it is reasonable and practicable to do so.


We may impose a moderate charge to access the information, as it may take time to process your application, retrieve the information and review it in order to determine relevance.


If we refuse to provide you with access to your personal information, we will notify you in writing of the reasons for the refusal and the process for escalation regarding this refusal.


Correction

You may request that we correct the personal information that we hold about you if you deem it to be inaccurate, incomplete, out-of-date, irrelevant, or misleading. We will respond to your request within a reasonable period and in compliance with any legal requirements, and we will take reasonable steps under the circumstances to correct the information.


If we refuse to correct your personal information, we will notify you in writing of the reasons detailing our refusal to correct the information and the process for escalation regarding this refusal. If you wish to exercise your rights of correction you should contact our Privacy Officer.


Changes to Statement

This statement will be reviewed and updated from time to time to take account of new laws and technology, changes to our operations and practices and to make sure it remains appropriate to the changing environment.


Please regularly check our privacy policy so that you are aware of these updates and changes. Any information we hold will be governed by the most current version of the Searson Buck privacy statement.


Searson Buck Group reserves the right to vary, change or terminate existing policies and devise and introduce new policies as deemed appropriate and necessary. The policies and procedures of Searson Buck Group do not impose contractual obligations on the Group.