Privacy & cookies

Last Review - 08/04/2024

Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy aims to articulate how the Forward Institute (also referred to as "we") collects uses and shares your personal data, and your rights in relation to any personal data that the Forward Institute holds. This Privacy Policy applies to:

All past, present and future members of the Forward Institute’s Fellowship and wider community;
Participants on any of the leadership interventions delivered by the Forward Institute from a partner organisation;
Those who work for partner, or potential partner, organisations with whom we interact;
Members, past and present, of the Forward Institute’s staff team
Those who access our website or other online services.

For ease and clarity, we will refer to all those identified above as “You”, “Your” or “Fellows” for the remainder of this policy document.

How we collect your information

Information about you will be collected by the Forward Institute in a number of ways:

From your employer, when you are put forward for consideration to be on a leadership programme or intervention delivered by the Forward Institute, or during ongoing conversations throughout the length of our partnership
On any nomination form and/ or when you complete an application form to become part of an intervention or programme delivered by the Forward Institute
In various other ways during the course of your time on a Leadership Programme or other intervention delivered by the Forward Institute for example:
From our Facilitators or Associate Directors who work with you or your partner organisation
From you, as a participant or Fellow
From contributors to our programme content

Information may be collected in a number of ways including through meeting notes, emails, messages and Communications platforms like WhatsApp, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Survey Monkey, Campaign Monitor, and Salesforce Portals and Sites.

Our website uses cookies to gather audience behaviour information using programmes like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Salesforce Integrations, Form submissions stored in the site and Hosting provider Krystal Hosting Ltd.

Information we collect

We may collect the following types of personal data about you:

Your name and contact information such as address, email address and telephone number, as well as your date of birth
Information relating to your current employment and employment history including where you have worked
Records relating to assessments of your progress on a Programme or intervention delivered by the Forward Institute, your attendance at events, the feedback you provide to events and interventions including through surveys; action learning sets; your meetings with facilitators, faculty, and other contributors; and other information and insights that you voluntarily provide
Your photo, photographs, audio recordings of your voice, and videos of you and your voice taken by us.
Sensitive personal data or special category data may be derived from information that you provide such as access requirements and food preferences or intolerances:
health and medical conditions
racial or ethnic origin
religion or similar beliefs

If you notify us in advance of commencing a Programme or intervention delivered by the Forward Institute or one of our partners, that you do not wish to be audibly and/or visually recorded, we will work with you to accommodate this.

How we use your information

The Forward Institute uses your information to:

Assess your suitability for the programmes or interventions delivery by the Forward Institute and its partners
Administer your participation on programmes and interventions delivered by the Forward Institute and its partners
Provide access to online and in person events or activities delivered by the Forward Institute and its partners
Provide access to resources
Monitor your progress and to provide support to you before, during and after programmes and interventions delivered by the Forward Institute and its partners
Connect you with other Fellows and participants on programmes and interventions delivered by the Forward Institute and its partners, including activities to build the wider Forward Institute community and other interest groups
Develop and tailor programmes and interventions delivered by the Forward Institute and its partners
Offer you the opportunity to take part in other programmes and interventions delivered by the Forward Institute and its partners that we think might be relevant and of interest to you or your organisation
Carry out our legal and other statutory duties
Broaden our understanding of your organisation and the work we have undertaken together
Create internal reports, dashboards, databases and performance charts to gain better insight and understanding of the work we do
Help us find efficiencies and patterns in our data which will improve our work going forward through systems such as Salesforce. Salesforce has some generative AI capabilities which we are looking to explore
API connections to third-party programmes such as Campaign Monitor or Survey Monkey - these connections will ensure the quality of our data as well as streamline our processes
We may employ Salesforce's Einstein features, which uses Artificial Intelligence to gather insights from Outlook interactions and meetings with customers.

Legal basis for collecting your information

We rely on several different legal basis depending on the processing being performed:

(Article 6(1)(a)), (your) Consent
(Article 6 (1)(b)), Necessary for the performance of our contract with you and/or your employer under which you have a place on the Leadership Programme – on many occasions the Forward Institute will process your data to enable us to meet our commitments to you and your employer
(Article 6 (1)(c)), Necessary to comply with a legal obligation – we may have legal obligations to provide your personal data to others

Our legal basis for collecting and using the personal information described above will depend on the personal information concerned and the specific context in which it is collected.

Who we share your information with

Where necessary we will disclose relevant items of your personal data as set out below:

To your employer in accordance with the terms of the contract (which usually relates to attendance and progress reports)
To Faculty, Contributors and Speakers or other partners for the purposes of your participation in and progress through programmes or interventions delivered by the Forward Institute
To organisers of events or venues for the purposes of allowing you access to such events and for catering to be provided to you

In addition, the Forward Institute employs the services of various suppliers and agents as data processors (such as Survey Monkey). In each case your information will only be shared with these third parties in accordance with the data protection principles

We will not sell or otherwise commercially exploit your personal data.

Data retention

The Forward Institute retains the personal information it collects from you only where there is an ongoing legitimate need to do so (for example, to develop and maintain our work in partnership with your organisation). We will endeavour to contact all alumni of Programmes and interventions delivered by the Forward Institute every 3 years, or following your last correspondence with us to confirm that you are happy for us to retain your data.

When there is no ongoing legitimate need to process your personal information or at your request if earlier, we will either delete or anonymise it ,or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

Your rights

You have rights to your personal data held by the Forward Institute as set out in the GDPR. These include:

Rights to access your personal data. This is to be provided by us within one calendar month – known as a Subject Access Requests (Article 15). This includes information on:
- A description of your data
- The Recipients of your data
- A copy of your data.
Rights to rectification and erasure. You have the right to correct any inaccurate personal data held by us. Once personal data we have collected is no longer necessary for the purpose for which it was collected and processed, (in addition to the right given above) you sometimes have the legal right to have your data erased.
Rights to restriction of processing.
- You sometimes have the right to restrict the processing of your personal data or object to the processing of your data.
- If you wish to withdraw consent for the processing of your personal data or otherwise restrict or object to the processing of your personal data, please use the contact information given below.
Rights to data portability. You have the right to receive your personal data we hold in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit that data to another controller without hindrance from us.

The website

This website and its owners take a proactive approach to user privacy and ensure the necessary steps are taken to protect the privacy of its users throughout their visiting experience. This website complies with all UK national laws and requirements for user privacy.

Use of cookies

This website uses cookies to improve users' experience while visiting the website. Where applicable, this website uses a cookie control system allowing the user on their first visit to the website to allow or disallow the use of cookies on their device. This complies with legislation requirements for websites to obtain explicit consent from users before leaving behind or reading files such as cookies on a user's device.

Cookies are small files saved to the user's device's hard drive that track, save and store information about the user's interactions and usage of the website. This allows the website, through its server, to provide users with a tailored experience within this website. Users are advised that if they wish to deny the use and saving of cookies from this website on to their device's hard drive, then they should take necessary steps within their web browser's security settings to block all cookies from this website and its external serving vendors.

Google Analytics, Adwords and Remarketing

This website uses tracking software to monitor its visitors to better understand how they use it. This software is provided by Google Analytics, which uses cookies to track visitor usage. The software will save a cookie to your device's hard drive to track and monitor your engagement and usage of the website, but won't store, save or collect personal information. You can read Google's privacy policy here for further information: google.com/privacy.

Other cookies may be stored to your device's hard drive by external vendors when this website uses referral programs, sponsored links or adverts. Such cookies are used for conversion and referral tracking and typically expire after 30 days, though some may take longer. No personal information is stored, saved or collected.

Google's Remarketing service places cookies on visitors' devices to re-show adverts across its display network of websites to remind visitors about this website and its services on offer.

To prevent Google Analytics using your data, you can opt out by following the instructions on this page: google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

Contact and communication

Users contacting this website and/or its owners do so at their own discretion and provide any personal details requested at their own risk. Your personal information is kept private and stored securely until a time it's no longer required or has no use, as detailed in the Data Protection Act 1998. Every effort has been made to ensure a safe and secure form-to-email submission process but we advise users that they do so at their own risk.

This website and its owners use any information submitted to provide you with further information about the products/services they offer or to assist you in answering any questions or queries you may have submitted. This includes using your details to subscribe you to any email newsletter program the website operates, but only if this was made clear to you and your express permission was granted when submitting any form-to-email process, or whereby you've previously purchased from or enquired about purchasing from the company a product or service that the email newsletter relates to. This isn't a comprehensive list of your user rights in regard to receiving email marketing material. Your details aren't passed on to any third parties.

External links

Although this website only looks to include quality, safe and relevant external links, users are advised adopt a policy of caution before clicking any external web links mentioned throughout this website. External links are clickable text/banner/image links to other websites.

The owners of this website can't guarantee or verify the contents of any externally linked website despite their best efforts. Users should therefore note they click on external links at their own risk and this website and its owners can't be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any external links mentioned.

Communication, engagement and actions taken through external social media platforms that this website and its owners participate on are custom to the terms and conditions as well as the privacy policies held with each social media platform.

Users are advised to use social media platforms wisely and communicate/engage with them with due care and caution in regard to their own privacy and personal details. This website or its owners will never ask for personal or sensitive information through social media platforms and encourage users wishing to discuss sensitive details to contact them through primary communication channels such as by phone or email.

This website may use social sharing buttons, which help share web content directly from web pages to the social media platform in question. Users are advised before using social sharing buttons that they do so at their own discretion and note that the social media platform may track and save your request to share a web page respectively through your social media platform account.

This website and its owners through their social media platform accounts may share web links to relevant web pages. By default, some social media platforms shorten lengthy URLs (for example: http://bit.ly/zyVUBo).

Users are advised to take caution and good judgement before clicking any shortened URLs published on social media platforms by this website and its owners. Despite the best efforts to ensure only genuine URLs are published, many social media platforms are prone to spam and hacking and therefore this website and its owners can't be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any shortened links.

Changes to this policy

We may amend this privacy notice and will occasionally update to reflect feedback received and enhance its accessibility. In this event we will post notice of the change on our website, and you will be deemed to have accepted such changes. The Forward Institute encourages you to periodically review this notice to be informed of how we are protecting your privacy.