This explains who is responsible for the personal data in useful hr, and what to do if you want something changed.
The short version
Your employer decides what is in here. Your objectives, reviews, ratings, role and reporting line are put into useful hr by your employer, and your employer decides what happens to them. They are the data controller. We run the software on their instructions.
So most questions go to your employer. If you want to see, correct or delete your performance data, ask your HR team. We are not permitted to act on that request ourselves — acting on it would mean overriding our customer’s decisions about their own records.
A small part is ours. For your account and our security, we are the controller. That part is set out below, and for it you can come to us directly.
Who we are
useful hr is run by Useful Software Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales with company number 16352620. Our registered office is at 1 Tape Street, Cheadle, Stoke-On-Trent, Staffordshire, England, ST10 1BB.
What your employer controls
Everything about you as an employee:
- Your name, work email address and employee identifier
- Your job title, role, reporting line and business unit
- Your objectives, and progress against them
- Review responses, ratings and comments — yours and those written about you
- Talent and succession assessments
- Skills, experience and career interests
Your employer chose to use useful hr, decided what to record, and decides who can see it. Their own privacy notice covers this. Ask your HR team for it.
We use this data only to provide the service to your employer. We do not sell it, we do not use it for advertising, and we do not use it to train models that serve other customers.
What we control
For a small set of data we are the controller, because it is about running the service securely rather than about you as an employee:
| What | Why | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Sign-in identifier and authentication events | Letting you in, and detecting unauthorised access | Legitimate interests — security |
| Session and device information | Keeping accounts secure | Legitimate interests — security |
| Support correspondence | Answering you when you contact us | Legitimate interests — support |
For this data, you can contact us directly using the details below.
Who else sees it
We use a small number of providers to run useful hr. They are listed in our sub-processor list, with what each one does and where. Ask us for it at support@usefulhr.co.
Your employee data is stored in Belgium (Google Cloud, europe-west1). Your sign-in account is handled by Firebase Authentication, which Google runs only from its data centres in the United States. It holds your email address, your name and photo if you sign in with Google, your sign-in events including IP addresses, and the ids and permissions that let you into a workspace. It holds none of your reviews, ratings or objectives.
How long it is kept
Your employee data is kept for as long as your employer’s subscription runs. When it ends, they have 30 days to export it, after which we delete it. Backups holding it expire within a further 30 days.
If you are removed from every workspace, we delete your sign-in account at once. If your employer takes away your role or suspends the workspace, or their directory deactivates you, your account stays, with no access, and is deleted with the rest of your data about 2 years later. Google removes its copy within 180 days of the deletion. Our server logs are kept for 30 days. When someone asks for a sign-in link, we keep the email address typed in, and a hashed form of the IP address the request came from, to stop repeated requests. We delete both within 2 days. The record of our staff’s support access, which can name you, is kept for 12 months.
Your rights
You have the right to ask for a copy of your personal data, to have it corrected or deleted, to restrict or object to how it is used, and to receive it in a portable form.
Which door to knock on:
- For your employee data — your employer. They are the controller, and they decide. If they ask us to help them answer you, we will.
- For your account and security data — us, at support@usefulhr.co.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled the part we control, you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk. We would rather you told us first.
Automated decisions
useful hr does not make automated decisions about you. It presents information to the people at your organisation who make those decisions. A rating, a grid position or a succession assessment in this app was entered by a person, not calculated by us.
Changes
If we change how we handle personal data, we update this page and change the date at the top. Material changes are notified to your workspace owner.