Our commitment to maintaining your privacy
At St Merkorious Charity, protecting the privacy and confidentiality of our staff and clients’ personal information is very important to us. Equally, obtaining and maintaining their trust is fundamental to the way we do business.
St Merkorious manages personal information, as an APP entity, under the Australian Privacy Principles (APP).
What your personal information is
Personal information is any information about you. It may range from the very sensitive to the every day (e.g. name, address and phone number). It would include the opinions of others about your work performance (whether true or not), your work experience and qualifications, aptitude test results and other information obtained by us in connection with your possible job placements. Personal information includes sensitive information. St Merkorious will only collect and hold information that is reasonably necessary for the proper performance of our functions and activities as a charity and is likely to differ depending on whether you are a Client; or an employee.
What sensitive information is
Sensitive is information or opinion about your:
Racial or ethnic origin; or Political opinion; or Membership of a political association or religious beliefs, affiliations or philosophical beliefs; or Membership of a professional or trade association or membership of a trade union; or Sexual preferences or practices; or Criminal record; or Health or disability (at any time).
Sensitive information can, in most cases, only be disclosed with your consent. We do not actively seek to collect such sensitive information unless it is necessary for our business purposes. If we do have to collect sensitive information, we will do so in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles.
Who will be collecting your personal and sensitive information
Your personal and sensitive information might be collected by St Merkorious Pty Ltd for its own use and may require access to your personal and sensitive information in connection with your work placements.
How your information will be collected
We sometimes collect information from third parties and publicly available sources when it is necessary for a specific purpose such as checking information that you have given us or where you have consented or would reasonably expect us to collect your personal information in this way. When we collect personal information about you from publicly available sources for inclusion in our records, we will manage the information in accordance with the APPs.
The means by which we will generally collect your personal information are likely to differ depending on whether you are:
A Candidate or employee:
Generally, the type of personal information we collect about you is the information included in your application or resume, for example, your name, mailing address, telephone number, e-mail address, career history, details of any competency tests or other information relating to your career.
Where practical, we collect your personal information directly from you, when you fill out and submit one of our registration forms or any other information in connection with your application to us for registration and you attend an interview with one of our staff members. We may collect personal information about you when you deal with us by telephone, letter, e-mail, or visit our website.
A Client:
Personal information about you may be collected when you provide it to us for business or business-related social purposes.
A Referee:
Personal information about you may be collected when you provide it to us in the course of our checking candidate references with you and when we are checking information that we obtain from you about Job seekers.
We will not request that you supply photographs, scan photo ID, or capture and retain video image data of you in cases where simply sighting photographs or proof of identity documents would be sufficient in the circumstances.
On-line registrations
You may choose to send and store information via our website or e-mail your personal information to St Merkorious as part of an Online registration. The mandatory information, in addition to any additional information you include as part of your application is submitted to us.
This information gathered at this point is stored in our database for retrieval and use by St Merkorious staff only for the purpose for which it is intended. By submitting your personal information in this way, you acknowledged and accept our privacy collection statement.
Respecting your Internet Privacy
Your privacy is important to St Merkorious and we want you to feel confident using our website. In order to gain your confidence St Merkorious’ Web site Privacy Statement has been included online so as to provide you with a clear indication of how St Merkorious complies with the privacy legislation.
If you visit an area of the St Merkorious Web site to which you are not required to log on in order to read, browse or download information, our systems may record the date and time of your visit, the pages visited and any information downloaded. Our systems will not record any information that would identify you personally without your consent.
The information gathered cannot be directly matched to an individual and is only used for administration and statistical purposes such as error logging. It can only tell us about how you used the website. This information can help us determine what areas of our website are most beneficial to our visitors. No attempt is made by St Merkorious to identify users or their browsing activities.
St Merkorious may also use the information collected to notify you about changes to our website and to inform you of services, opportunities and special events that St Merkorious believes that you’ll find valuable.
With your Consent
Other than as outlined above, we will endeavour to provide you with notice (which may occur via your nominated e-mail or telephone) when we wish to provide personal information about you to third parties and provide you with the opportunity to choose not to share that information.
By visiting this site, you agree with and consent to the practices described in this Privacy Statement. Should you not agree with this Privacy Statement you should cease using the Web site immediately.
This Privacy Statement may be updated from time to time as the Web site and its content develops and matures. We encourage you to check this Privacy Statement regularly.
Changes to our Privacy Policy
If at any time our policy changes, the updated details will always be available here on our website for your perusal. This version was last updated in May 2023.
Personal and sensitive information may be disclosed to …
We may use and disclose your personal information for the purposes it was collected, (primary purpose) or for a related or ancillary purpose such as providing you with one of our services., this disclosure will only occur in the following circumstances:
our contractors and suppliers – e.g. our I.T. Contractors and database designers
Our policy on Direct Marketing
We may send you direct marketing communications and information about our services and any other offers that we consider might be of interest to you. Unless you state otherwise, St Merkorious will be under the impression that you consent to receive direct marketing communications and information from our company. In accordance with relevant marketing laws such as the Spam Act 2003, we may use various methods of communication such as by phone or via email, SMS, fax and/or mail.
In some situations, you may indicate which form of communication you prefer and we will endeavour to use the medium of your choice if it is possible. There is an option to opt-out and not receive these messages if that is your preference.
If you would like to be removed from our mailing list, please contact our office and inform us of these changes.
As part of our company policy, St Merkorious will never provide your personal information to other organisations for the purposes of direct marketing without prior consent by you.
Where required by Law
In certain circumstances, we may be required by law to disclose your personal information, for example, where disclosure is ordered by a Court, or subpoenaed in relation to third-party litigation. We also reserve the right to choose to disclose your information to law enforcement agencies in circumstances described in the Australian Privacy Principles and other applicable laws and regulations, including for the purpose of investigating alleged contraventions of the law.
If you do not give us the information we seek we may be limited in our ability to provide services for you.
How secure is your information? (how your personal information is held)
We continually review these arrangements to ensure we do all that is reasonable to protect your information.
Personal information is held in our Information Record System until it is no longer needed for any purpose for which it may be used or disclosed, at which time it will be de-identified or destroyed provided that is it lawful for us to do so.
Your personal information may be stored in hard copy or electronically. We have security procedures in place to protect your personal information. For example, your personal information may be stored in our secured premises located in the. This will be in the form of a hard copy and/or soft copy in computerised databases.
We attempt to keep our server secure and free from unauthorised access and use, by enforcing physical security at the premises in which the server is located, and by using industry-standard technological measures to prevent unauthorised remote access to the server. Access to your Personal information is limited to staff. Our security methods require a login, and password to gain access.
All staff is bound by a confidentiality agreement regarding company and customer information. For safety reasons, visitors to our premises are always accompanied by a member of staff during the duration of their visit.
We use secure methods to destroy or re-identify personal information.
We engage a supplier to securely shred all personal information. Or unless a requirement by law such as retained for tax /wages information. Or as soon as the law permits and provided we no longer need that information.
Unless you advise us otherwise your personal details will be kept on the database.
Security of your personal information.
Unfortunately, no server on the Internet or any data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. Despite our best efforts to keep our server and transmissions to and from our server secure, we are unable to absolutely guarantee security and there will always be a risk of unauthorised access to your information. Although we will take all reasonable steps to keep secure any information that we hold about you from misuse, loss-unauthorised access, modification and disclosure.
We can not guarantee that it is totally protected from hackers or misuse. We will not be held responsible for events arising from unauthorised access to such information.
Contact us
If you wish to contact us about your personal or sensitive information or would like to make an inquiry or update your information you must contact:
Amira Fanous – Office Manager
Tel: 02 9799 9954
Email: amirafa@stmerkorious.com.au
We will deal with your request to provide information within a reasonable time.
We may seek payment for our costs of supplying you with this information; we will not charge you simply because you lodge a request for access.
You should also anticipate that it may take a little time to process your application for access as there may be a need to retrieve information from storage and to review information in order to determine which information may be provided
Keeping your personal information up-to-date
Subject to some exceptions which are set out in the Australian Privacy Principles (Principle 7 – Access and Correction), you have a right to gain access to the personal information we hold about you. If you wish to exercise your rights of access and correction you should contact our privacy coordinator whose details are shown above. You will need to verify your identity.
If your personal information changes please contact us and we will endeavour to update and correct the information. We will take such steps as are reasonable in the circumstances to correct that information to ensure that, having regard to the purpose for which it is held, the information is accurate, up-to-date, complete, relevant and not misleading. For this reason, we may also contact you from time to time to check the information is still correct.
If we are unable to agree that the personal or sensitive information that we hold about you is accurate, complete and up-to-date, you may ask us to place with the information a statement by you that claims that particular information is not accurate, complete and up-to-date.
Dispute resolution and complaints process
A complaints process has been established to resolve any disputes or complaints regarding any aspect of the Privacy policy at St Merkorious. You have the right to complain about our handling of your personal information; it should first be made to us in writing to our privacy Coordinator whose details are above.
You can also make complaints to the Office of the Australian Commissioner
Private policy
By reading this privacy/collection statement, you consent to us collecting, maintaining, using and disclosing personal information, about you provided by you or by another person in accordance with this Privacy collection statement and our privacy policy.
All information sought and collected is required for our business purposes. You understand and accept each of the statements in this collection statement and voluntary consent to;
Our Privacy Statement has been created because we value our clients and recognise their right to keep information private. This statement discloses what information we gather from our visitors and why the information is gathered.
Collecting information on-site visits
We collect information on our client visits and this data is always used as a tool. We utilise this information with monitoring and feedback to improve and enhance our services.
Where practical we collect information directly from you. When you deal with us by telephone, letter, fax, e-mail or via our web site or a visit to one of your offices, we may collect personal information about your company and this is stored on our database.
Please note that the information provided by you is not disclosed to any of our agents and that we utilise this information to improve and enhance our services.
Your company information may be disclosed to …
We may use and disclose your personal information for the purposes it was collected, (primary purpose) or for a related or ancillary purpose such as providing you with one of our services.
To facilitate our efficient use of your information, and to provide you with the best services and/or opportunities, it may sometimes be necessary for St Merkorious to disclose your information to third parties.
However, this disclosure will only occur in the following circumstances:
