Confidentiality policy

Clear Fr8 Manchesters confidentiality policy explains how we expect our employees to treat confidential information. Employees will unavoidably receive and handle personal and private information about clients, partners and our company. We want to make sure that this information is well-protected.

We must protect this information for two reasons. It may:

Be legally binding (e.g. sensitive customer data.)

Constitute the backbone of our business, giving us a competitive advantage (e.g. business processes.)

Scope

This policy affects all employees, including board members, investors and contractors who may have access to confidential information.

Policy elements

Confidential and proprietary information is secret, valuable, expensive and/or easily replicated. Common examples of confidential information are:

Unpublished financial information

Data of Customers/Partners/Vendors

Patents, formulas or new technologies

Customer lists (existing and prospective)

Data entrusted to our company by external parties

Pricing/marketing and other undisclosed strategies

Documents and processes explicitly marked as confidential

Unpublished goals, forecasts and initiatives marked as confidential

 

Employees may have various levels of authorized access to confidential information.

 

What employees should do:

 

Lock or secure confidential information at all times

Shred confidential documents when they’re no longer needed

Make sure they only view confidential information on secure devices

Only disclose information to other employees when it's necessary and authorized

Keep confidential documents inside our company's premises unless it's absolutely necessary to move them

 

 

 

 

What employees shouldn't do:

 

Use confidential information for any personal benefit or profit

Disclose confidential information to anyone outside of our company

Replicate confidential documents and files and store them on insecure devices

When employees stop working for our company, they're obliged to return any confidential files and delete them from their personal devices.

Confidentiality Measures

We'll take measures to ensure that confidential information is well protected. We'll:

Store and lock paper documents

Encrypt electronic information and safeguard databases

Ask employees to sign non-compete and/or non-disclosure agreements (NDAs)

Ask for authorization by senior management to allow employees to access certain confidential information

Exceptions

Confidential information may occasionally have to be disclosed for legitimate reasons. Examples are:

If a regulatory body requests it as part of an investigation or audit

If our company examines a venture or partnership that requires disclosing some information (within legal boundaries)

In such cases, employees involved should document their disclosure procedure and collect all needed authorizations. We're bound to avoid disclosing more information than needed.

Disciplinary Consequences

Employees who don't respect our confidentiality policy will face disciplinary and, possibly, legal action.

We'll investigate every breach of this policy. We'll terminate any employee who wilfully or regularly breaches our confidentiality guidelines for personal profit. We may also have to punish any unintentional breach of this policy depending on its frequency and seriousness. We'll terminate employees who repeatedly disregard this policy, even when they do so unintentionally.

This policy is binding even after separation of employment.