Ascend is committed to data protection and has revised our privacy statement to comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other applicable laws. This document explains what personal information we hold, how we use and handle it and your rights to that information.
Information we hold
We currently hold personal information in order to provide our services as contracted with you or your employer. These services may include consultancy, training courses or the provision of products. This information could include some or all of the following:
• identifying Information – first name, last name
• contact Information – email address, phone number, postal address
• professional Information – job title, qualifications held in psychometric tests
• behavioural Information – psychometric test data
• marketing & contact preferences – how clients like to be contacted and preferences for marketing information and newsletters
Information we do not hold
Ascend does not hold any bank account or credit card information - when payment for services is made by credit card financial details are entered directly onto the PayPal secure online payment system. Bank details may be collected for payment of services by the client. Such information is only collected if voluntarily submitted to us by the data subject.
How we obtain the data
The personal data that we have is either provided to us by you or your employer. This may be when you completed a form on our website, booked onto one of our training courses or requested another service.
Why we hold this personal information
In some contexts, Ascend acts as a data controller where we collect data from data subjects. An example of this is the personal information we collect from people participating in programmes or workshops. In other contexts, Ascend acts as a data processor, collecting and processing data on behalf of our customer, the data controller. An example of this is when a client asks us to administer psychometric tests as part of a programme.
We may hold your data:
• to fulfil a contract we have with our client
• if you have given us your consent to do so
• if we are legally required to do so
• when it is necessary for our legitimate interest
How we use your personal information
The information we hold will be used principally to deliver contracted services and products only for the stated purpose and for no longer than necessary. In carrying out these services we may do one or more of the following:
• we may use your details so that we can communicate with you by email or phone
• we may generate psychometric test reports and provide them (confidentially) to an individual attending a programme or workshop course
• we may generate psychometric test reports and provide them to an organisation who has requested psychometric testing of individuals for development purposes
• we may use information collected on individuals within a team in order to provide a report on the team as a whole, and to help with the team’s development and performance
• we may use personal information (in an anonymised format) for our own internal research purposes if agreed in our contract in order to produce relevant external norm groups so that individuals, teams and organisations can compare themselves to others
Your personal information is held and processed in Ireland. Your personal information may also beheld and processed in the EU. If your personal information is transferred outside of the EEA, we ensure that the level of protection provided is sufficient to meet the requirements of the EU directive. Data collected from psychometric assessments carried out online are managed by third party test publishers, who we have written agreements in place with to ensure all reasonable data protection measures are taken by them to secure your data.
What we don’t do with your personal information
• we do not use any automated decision-making systems relating to your personal data
• we do not sell your data to any third party
• we do not transfer your data to any parties other than sub-contractors agreed in our contract and necessary for us to carry out our contracted service
• we do not use your data for any purposes other than those agreed in our contract
How long do we keep your personal data?
The information we use to communicate with you will be kept until you notify us that you no longer wish to receive information from us or you want us to delete your personal data.
Where a client (data controller) has requested we collect psychometric test data for their employee, any personal data that we hold will be kept in line with their requirements, or if the data controller has not communicated this with us we will hold the data for no longer than 3 months.
All psychometric testing data collected for workshop delegates is deleted within 3 months of the programme attended.
What are your personal data rights?
Depending on the preferences indicated by you, we may use your personal data to contact you about developments and offers and for customer feedback. You can request that your details are not to be used for marketing purposes, that we provide you with a copy of the information we hold about you and that we correct inaccuracies in your information. If at any point you believe the personal information we hold on you is incorrect, you want us to correct that information or you no longer want us to hold that information or contact you, you can exercise your rights under the current data protection laws. These rights include:
• the right to be informed
• the right of access
• the right to rectification
• the right to erasure
• the right to restrict processing
• the right to data portability
• the right to object
• the right not to be subject to automated decision-making including profiling
Changes to the Data Protection & Privacy Policy
This Data Protection Policy was last updated in May 2018. We reserve the right to amend or update the policy from time to time.