We know the importance of consent to keep one's personal data is, especially when it comes to hiring. In Sage HR there is increased flexibility and automation when dealing with applicants' Personally Identifying Information (PII).

New tools in Sage HR allow to prompt the applicants for consent to store their information in Sage HR (both automatically and manually), to revoke the consent, as well as make their personal information anonymous.

⚠️CAUTION: By enabling this feature you will trigger a mechanism that may automatically alter the data of your applicants. We recommend to read this article and consider carefully your company's internal approach to data retention before activating this feature.

What do I need to set it up?

A user with Administrator level access in Sage HR.

How do I get to Data retention settings?

As an admin user, click on your name on the top right, then click Settings.
On the settings menu, click Recruitment, then click Data retention.

Enable data retention

Select Enable data retention policy for applicants to enable the data retention policy in your Sage HR company. Every other settings becomes active once selected.

If enabled the system keeps the private information of applicants who didn't provide their consent for amount of days specified by the 'store information for' parameter. The system also automatically sends email queries after the period specified in 'Send consent inquiry automatically after...

What happens if I disable the Data retention policy feature after the consent inquiries are sent out?

These applicants who will receive the email will still be able to approve or decline the consent inquiry. Their personal information may be altered automatically unless they provide an approval to keep their data by clicking a button in the consent inquiry email.

📎NOTE: Automated emails and automated anonymisation features only apply to applicants who are added after the Data retention policy parameter is enabled and saved.

Enter time frames for storing data and prompting for consent

Set the times frames for how long data is stored, and when applicants are prompted for their consent based on whether they intially consented or not.

Send consent inquiry automatically after ___ days - When a new applicant without previous consent is added in Sage HR, they get an email inquiry asking to provide the consent to keep their data in your Sage HR account. Enter how many days.
Store personal information for ___ days - This is the duration of data retention for an applicant who is due to provide or decline consent. Enter how many days.

Store personal information for ___ months" - Once an applicant has provided consent, their personal information will be stored for the specified amount of time you enter.

Send a repeated inquiry ___ days before consent expiration - Before the applicant's consent expires, Sage HR will send them a repeated inquiry to extend their consent. This setting specifies the amount of days the applicant will have to provide a new consent before the previous expires and their data is made anonymous.

Prompt to extend consent for ___ months - This is the duration of repeated consent, when the consent is automatically re-inquired.

How do these settings work altogether?

For every new applicant who was not asked for consent to keep and process their data yet, a new button in the applicant's profile will appear: Ask for consent.

When you click this button it sends a consent inquiry to the applicant's mailbox. The applicant can Approve or Decline the inquiry using the buttons in the email they receive.

Unless requested manually, the system will send out the inquiries automatically after a period of time, as specified in parameter Send consent inquiry automatically after ___ days. Such inquiries will be sent to all new applicants who were never asked for consent. You can change this value according to your preference.

Sage HR will wait for the applicant's consent as long as specified in the Store personal information for ___ days parameter. If an applicant hasn't provided consent by the moment the specified period has expired, their data will be automatically made anonymous.

If applicant has provided consent to store their data, personal data is retained in Sage HR for the duration of the Store personal information for ___ months parameter.

The consent can be revoked using Revoke consent button.

Revoking consent will immediately make anonymous the private information of this applicant.

Before the consent expires, the system will re-inquire the applicant to extend their consent as specified by the Send consent inquiry automatically after ___ days and "Prompt to extend consent for ___ months" parameters.

⚠️ There are more cases when private details of your applicants can be anonymised. Read about these cases below.

Personal data anonymisation

How does anonymisation work?

Anonymisation means cleaning up system areas that may contain personal information about those applicants who declined to provide consent to keep their data, or they didn't provide it in time. The applicant's record will remain open and will be reflected in all reports.

When are they made anonymous?

Your applicant records will get made anonymous in the following cases:

You have "Revoked consent" for this applicant
An applicant was sent a consent inquiry but they took too long to respond i.e. longer than specified in the Store personal information for __ days parameter
An applicant Declined a consent inquiry using Decline button in their consent inquiry email

You can choose whether some particular registers will clear when anonymisation happens:

Comments in applicants profile
Comments in scorecard
Connected tasks
Interviews

Select the relevant options, scroll down then click Save.

Customise consent email templates

You can customise templates for the following three emails:

Applicants without referral
Applicants with referral
Consent extension inquiry

Customise consent confirmation page

When an employee approves or declines consent, you can customise the page applicants are taken to that confirms what they selected.

Click the pencil ✏️ icon to open the edit view of any of these emails. Here you can edit the text that will be used as a basis for the email. You can use various placeholders that will be converted into values based on data stored and configured in your system.