Privacy notice
A line manager or buddy without a work inbox will soon be able to get their check-ins by WhatsApp instead of email.
This notice explains how Accolgo handles your personal information. Accolgo is an early-warning system for the first months of a new job. It asks a new starter, their line manager and a buddy short check-in questions, and turns the answers into a color and a suggested next step for the line manager, without anyone reading the individual answersso that a supportive conversation happens at the right moment.
Accolgo’s colour, reasons and suggested next step are there to prompt a supportive conversation, not to judge anyone’s performance.
Which law applies
There is no single federal privacy law in the United States covering information of this kind. Instead there is a patchwork of state statutes. This notice is written to California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), because it is the most prescriptive and because its exemption for employee and job-applicant information expired on 1 January 2023, which places workforce data of exactly this kind squarely within its scope. If you are covered by another state’s law, you keep whatever rights that law gives you.
Who is responsible
Your employer (the organization that invited you) decides why and how your check-in information is used, so under the CCPA it is the business. Accolgo processes it only on that employer’s documented instructions, as its service provider, which is a defined role under the CCPA and a deliberately narrow one: a service provider may not sell your information, may not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, and may not use it for its own purposes. Questions should go first to your organization’s people team; you can also contact Accolgo directly.
What we collect
- Your name, work email, job title, start date and who your manager and buddy are.
- Your check-in answers: worded replies to short questions.
- Your notes and requests: an optional note to your manager, and an optional request for a conversation.
- From managers and buddies: their check-in answers about how the starter seems.
- Follow-up records: that a manager marked a conversation as done, with an optional short note.
- Once WhatsApp check-ins start, which is coming soon, from a line manager or buddy who chooses WhatsApp: their mobile phone number, so that their check-in can be sent to it.
We collect this for one purpose, to support your settling in, and that purpose is explained to you before your first check-in. We do not ask for financial, biometric or precise geolocation information. Your answers and notes may contain information about your health, which the CCPA treats as sensitive personal information (see “Health and other sensitive information” below).
Health and other sensitive information
Some check-in questions ask how you are feeling and settling in. Your answers, and anything you choose to write in a note, may tell us something about your health, including your mental health, or about something that has happened to you at work, such as harassment. The CCPA treats information about your health as “sensitive personal information”. We do not ask you for it directly, but you may choose to share it, and we treat everything you write as if it could be.
When a note may mean you, or someone else, is at risk. Accolgo’s software reads each note for words that suggest a risk of harm, sexual harassment, bullying, or another safety concern. If it finds them, it marks the note with that type of concern and sends it straight away to the senior people your employer has named to handle this (usually the head of people). It may also show you details of a free helpline.
A note you write for your manager is read by your manager. Your head of people sees it only if your next check-in is still not settling. When Accolgo picks up a safety concern in a note, it also goes to HR. If our software thinks the note may show a concern, we will ask you whether it is about your manager. If you say yes, your manager will not see it and only the senior people will. A private word with someone senior, or a note you have said is about your manager, goes to your manager only if your organisation has nobody senior other than your manager, and you are told this before you send it.
The software can be wrong in both directions: it can mark something that was not a concern, and it can miss something that was. The software never makes a decision about your job, pay, probation or performance. It only decides who is shown a note and what marking appears; a person at your employer reads it and decides what happens.
Who decides the rules. Your employer decides whether to use Accolgo and who receives these notes, and is responsible for the legal reasons for handling this information. Accolgo designs the word checks and the categories. You can ask your employer which legal reasons it relies on.
How long it is kept. A note that raised a concern is kept while the concern is open, even if it would otherwise have been deleted, so that nothing is lost while it is being dealt with. After that it follows the normal schedule in our data retention policy.
Your choice. You never have to write a note. If you would rather speak to someone in person, you can ask for a word with your manager, or a private word with someone senior who is not your manager.
Who sees your answers
Nobody at your organization reads your individual answers: not your manager, not the head of people and not anyone in HR. Accolgo’s software turns your answers into a color, the reasons behind it and a suggested next step for your manager. Your answers are stored in our database. Our database provider (Supabase) encrypts everything it stores at rest; Accolgo does not add separate encryption of its own. Access to the stored data is limited to the Accolgo application itself and Accolgo’s own authorized technical staff, who need it to run the service, not to read your answers, and to Supabase as the provider that hosts it. A note you choose to write to your manager is read by your manager. If your next check-in is still not settling, your head of people sees that note too, with your manager’s follow-up notes. When Accolgo picks up a safety concern in a note, it also goes to HR, or to HR alone if it is about your manager. A private word with someone senior goes to the head of people and any named senior contacts your organization has set up, as described below.
In rare cases, such as a legal requirement or a serious safety concern, a starter’s answers can be released to their employer, only on a written request approved by Accolgo, and never routinely.
Markings, not verdicts. Accolgo turns each check-in into simple scores by topic (1 to 5), and uses them to give each new starter one of four markings: Needs attention, Worth watching, Settling well, or Too early to tell. The marking is a prompt for your manager to have a conversation, not a judgement about you or your performance. It is never used to rank people against each other and there are no league tables of people. The software never makes a decision about your job, pay, probation or performance. It only decides who is shown a note and what marking appears; a person at your employer reads it and decides what happens. You can ask to see your markings and scores as part of a subject access request.
What we never do
- We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. Under the CCPA both of those are defined terms, and both are simply outside what this product does.
- A “private word” with someone senior who is not your manager goes to the head of people and to any named senior contacts your organisation has set up. It never goes to your manager, except when your organisation has nobody senior other than your manager, in which case you are told this before you send it and shown other sources of help. Where it does not go to your manager, the head of people decides whether, and when, your manager is told. It is stored in the database along with other check-in answers, and access to that stored data is restricted to Accolgo's own authorised technical staff, who need it to run the service.
- No automated decision is made about you. Accolgo surfaces a signal and suggests a conversation; every decision about a person stays with people.
- Nothing is collected covertly: every check-in is asked for openly, by email and, soon, for a line manager or buddy without a work inbox, by WhatsApp, and this notice is shown before the first one.
Your rights
Under the CCPA you have the right to know what personal information is collected about you and why, to access a copy of it, to have it corrected if it is wrong, to have it deleted, and not to be discriminated against for exercising any of those rights. Because Accolgo does not sell or share information as those terms are defined, there is no opt-out to exercise, but the right exists and we will confirm that position on request.
A request for your information includes what your manager and buddy said about you, balanced against their own privacy interest. Requests go to your organization’s people team or to Accolgo, and are acknowledged within ten business days and answered within forty-five calendar days, extendable once where the CCPA permits.
If you believe your information has been mishandled, you may complain to the California Privacy Protection Agency or your state Attorney General. We would ask that you raise it with us or your employer first so we can put it right.
If you contact us through our website
If you use the enquiry form on our website, we collect your name, work email, organisation, roughly how many new starters you take on a year and anything you write in your message. We use these details only to reply to your enquiry. They are sent to us by email through our email provider and are not saved in the Accolgo database. For these details, Clickonic Limited (Accolgo is its trading name) decides how they are used. We keep the email for as long as we need it to deal with your enquiry and anything that follows from it.
Cookies and website analytics
Accolgo sets essential cookies to keep you signed in and to remember your cookie choice. These do not need your consent.
If you accept analytics cookies, we use Google Analytics to learn how people use our website and the Accolgo app, so we can improve them. It records which pages are opened and which features are used, such as running the calculator, starting the product tour or adding a new starter. For signed-in users it also records their kind of role (for example line manager or head of people) and which country's version of the site they use.
It never records names, email addresses, organisation names, check-in answers or anything anyone types, and page addresses are recorded without any record number in them. Google Analytics is never used on the check-in pages that new starters, managers and buddies answer, on unsubscribe pages or in emails.
Google Analytics sets cookies whose names begin with _ga. They last up to six months. Google's advertising features are switched off, so nothing collected is used for advertising. Google Analytics keeps this data for 14 months and then deletes it.
For this analytics data, Accolgo decides how this data is used. Accolgo is a trading name of Clickonic Limited. We do not sell this information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. Google may process this data in the United States and other countries.
You choose whether to accept or reject analytics cookies when you first visit. You can change your choice at any time using the Cookie settings link at the foot of the page. If you withdraw your consent, analytics stops straight away and we remove the Google Analytics cookies from your browser. We ask again after six months.
Contact us
For anything about your personal information, including asking for a copy of it or making a complaint, email dermot@clickonic.co. You can also contact your employer’s people team, who are responsible for your information. If you are still unhappy, you can complain to the California Privacy Protection Agency (privacy.ca.gov) or your state Attorney General.
Where information lives
Your check-in information is stored in the United Kingdom, in Supabase’s London region. This is worth stating plainly to an American reader, because it is not what most US buyers assume. Some operators process limited information elsewhere: hosting (Vercel), transactional email (Resend) and the in-app help assistant (Anthropic) may process it in the United States, and error monitoring (Sentry) in the United States or the EU.
No US state privacy law currently restricts where this information may be stored. Accolgo remains responsible for it wherever it is processed, and requires each processor to protect it to a comparable standard by written agreement.
Once WhatsApp check-ins start, which is coming soon, and a line manager or buddy chooses WhatsApp, their check-in message will be sent through Twilio, and Meta will provide the WhatsApp Business service that carries it. Twilio and Meta will handle their mobile phone number and the message, which can name the new starter and holds a private check-in link.
How long we keep it
We intend to keep personal information only for as long as the onboarding program needs it, and then delete it on the schedule in our data retention policy. Automatic deletion is not switched on yet. Until it is, we keep personal information until it is deleted, and we delete it by hand when your organization asks or you exercise your right to deletion, save for anything the law requires us to keep. The CCPA requires that retention period to be disclosed rather than open-ended, which is what the retention page does, with its dated update.
Anonymized history, which no longer identifies anyone, is intended to be deleted once it is more than 3 years old, once automatic deletion is switched on.