Privacy Notice

Privacy Notice for Candidates

For your awareness, National Grid plc “we” have an arrangement in place with National Gas Transmission plc, to share the personal information of those individuals, who choose to create a profile on our recruitment portal. National Gas Transmission plc is a company incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company number 02006000. We share this data for the purposes of supporting National Gas Transmission with their continued recruitment activities.

1. Introduction

National Grid plc and its associated group companies, as the Data Controller, who can be contacted at Warwick Technology Park, Gallows Hill, Warwick CV34 6DA, are committed to respecting the privacy of individuals. This notice outlines how “we” collect and use your personal information, and how, in doing so, we comply with our legal obligations to you. Your privacy is important to us, and we are committed to protecting and safeguarding your data privacy rights.

The term “personal information” in this notice refers to information that is about you as an individual, for the purpose of applicable data protection legislation (including but not limited to the UK General Data Protection Regulation) (“UK GDPR”).

If you have any queries in relation to this notice, or need more information please do not hesitate to contact us at:

Data Protection Team
National Grid House
Warwick Technology Park
Gallows Hill
Warwick
CV34 6DA

Or email us at dataprotection.af@nationalgrid.com

2. Why do we collect personal information about you?

We need to collect certain information from you, to register your interest in employment opportunities with National Grid and/or National Gas Transmission and be able to subsequently process any applications made by you, to those job roles you have applied for. With your continued consent, we can retain your details to keep you informed of future job opportunities.

We may also need to collect sensitive personal information from you to comply with our equal opportunity obligations.

3. What personal information may we collect about you?

We only ask for your details that are strictly necessary at each stage of the recruitment process. For example, in processing your initial application we ask for:

• Your name, title, aliases

• Your contact details (including addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses)

• Demographic information such as gender, age, date and location of birth, nationality, marital status

• Information contained within your CV or cover letter including, education/work history, academic/professional qualifications, past employment details, hobbies, any family dependencies

• Any further information you choose to give us to support a live application for a vacancy or to enquire about prospective vacancies.

If you are selected for interview, we process

• Information collected during interviews and/or telephone conversations

• Information provided by your nominated referees

• If attending one of our sites, data captured by CCTV footage, visitor logs, accident, and injury logs.

If you are successful, we need to process certain personal information as part of pre-employment checks, such as:

• Sensitive information relating to your mental and physical health, medication/treatment received, racial or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, religious or other similar beliefs

• Any spent or unspent convictions and/or cautions.

4. How do we collect your personal information?

We collect personal information in three primary ways:

(i) Personal information that you, the individual, give to us.

There are numerous ways you can share your information with us. These may include:

- Entering your details on our website or via an application form as part of the recruitment process

- Emailing your CV to a member of our recruitment team.

(ii) Personal information that we receive from other sources.

We may receive personal information about you from other sources:

- Your referees

- We may obtain information about you from searching for potential candidates from third party services, such as LinkedIn and other job sites; and

- If you “like” our page on Facebook or “follow” us on Twitter we may receive your personal information from those sites. Please be aware that National Grid does not control how these social media companies collect or process personal information in their roles as Data Controllers. Please refer to their own privacy policies for further details.

(iii) Personal information that we collect automatically, using cookies. National Grid utilise cookies to enhance your browsing experience, details can be found in National Grid’s Cookie policy available here.

5. How and why we use your personal information?

We use your personal information that is necessary to:

• Process your application and keep you informed throughout the recruitment process

• Assess your skills and competencies against the criteria for the job you have applied for

• Contact your nominated referees

• Verify your identity if your application has been successful

This processing is carried out on the basis of our legitimate interests in selecting suitable candidates for the advertised roles.

Our processing of information related to race, ethnicity, religious or other similar beliefs are to comply with our equal opportunity legal obligations, we monitor the diversity of our recruitment process for statistical purposes.

Our processing of information related to physical, mental and wellbeing health is undertaken for the assessment of an individual’s working capacity under our Health and Safety legal obligations.

In certain circumstances, we may collect necessary information related to known health conditions, including but not limited to:

• assisting in an emergency situation

• making adjustments as are reasonable to accommodate known medical conditions (for example, interviews and assessment centres taking place on site and for general National Grid site visits).

This is to comply with our legal obligations.

5.1. AI assisted decision making

The screening of your overall application may be assisted by an AI recruitment tool, should you choose to opt-in, that creates a profiled recommendation for our recruiters, to assist them in the hiring process. This screening tool makes a recommendation by learning National Grid’s job requirements, such as desired characteristics and qualifications, for the open role and then it evaluates your overall application against these specifications. The resulting given score from the tool will be used as an aid for our recruiters’ final decision.

Candidates with a lower given score are less likely to make the short list of advancing candidates.

Our purposes for using this screening tool are to find efficiencies in our recruitment process. AI assisted decision making allows us better to: -

identify suitable candidates faster;
evaluate the relevance of applications; and
assist our recruiters in making a short list of possible candidates.

This AI recruitment tool has been evaluated and implemented in line with National Grid’s Responsible Use of AI Policy. We will regularly review and audit the system to ensure that it creates outcomes which are fair, ethical and avoid discriminatory practices or biases.

If you would like to know more about how the screening tool reaches its outcomes, please do get in touch with us at careers@nationalgrid.com.

5.2. Consent processing

Where we do rely on your consent to process your personal information, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time by either notifying us, by referring to the contact details below, or by changing your preferences on the candidate portal.

6. Who has access to your Personal Information?

We will share your personal information with National Gas Transmission, who are a data controller in their own right. For more details about who they are, please see the National Gas Transmission website

Your information will be processed by employees of National Grid to fulfil our obligations to you as outlined in this notice. We may also share your details with third parties. Our third-party suppliers/service providers who perform functions on our behalf under contract, support our systems, operations and processes.

We may also share your details with law enforcement or other regulatory bodies who can legally request access to information about you for prevention and detection of crime.

7. Information security and International Transfers

National Grid uses various technological and procedural security measures to safeguard the personal data that we process. We are committed to taking all reasonable and appropriate steps to keep your personal information secure and to protect it from misuse, loss, or unauthorised access.

Where we use services that transfer your personal data internationally, we will take the necessary steps to ensure any transfer receives an adequate level of protection. We may seek to enter into or require our service providers to enter into data transfer agreements. We also have a thorough vendor due diligence program to ensure our service providers meet our required standards.

The table below outlines the instances where your personal information may be transferred outside of the UK.

Service: Location:

Inter group transfers National Grid USA

Server/Cloud hosting and storage facilities USA

HR & Shared Services Administration India

8. How long will you keep my Personal Information?

National Grid will retain your personal information for the period needed to fulfil the purposes outlined in this privacy notice unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law.

Data relating to unsuccessful applications made will be retained for 12 months, where National Grid has a financial and statutory reporting obligation to keep it. We may retain your personal data, if you give clear consent for us to do so, to keep you informed of new and upcoming vacancies that you may be interested in.

Inactive accounts for external candidates on our recruitment portal will be deleted after two years or upon your request.

9. What rights do I have with regards to my personal information?

National Grid adheres to applicable data protection laws and your rights regarding your personal data are outlined below:

• The right to access information we hold about you, why we have that information, who has access to the information and where we obtained the information from

• The right to correct and update the information we hold about you. If the data we hold about you is out of date, incomplete or incorrect you can inform us, and your data will be updated

• The right to have your information erased. If you believe we should no longer be using your data you can request that we erase the data that we hold. Upon receiving a request for erasure, we will confirm whether it has been deleted or a reason why it cannot be deleted (for example because we have a legal obligation to keep the information)

• The right to object to processing of your data. You may request that we stop processing information about you. Upon receiving your request, we will contact you and let you know if we are able to comply or if we have legitimate grounds to continue to process your data. Even after you exercise your right to object, we may continue to hold your data to comply with your other rights or bring or defend legal claims

• The right to request a copy of your data in a commonly used, machine-readable format

• The right to request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

We will comply with your request where it is lawful and feasible to do so, within one month of receiving your request. There are no fees or charges for the first request. However additional requests for the same data may be subject to an administrative fee.

To exercise your rights, please contact: