Privacy Policy for Psychological Assessments

Chandler Macleod Consulting Privacy Policy for Psychological Assessments (Assessment Privacy Policy)

Chandler Macleod Consulting (“CMC”), part of the RGF Staffing APEJ group of companies (collectively referred to as ‘the Company’), provides this interrelated Assessment Privacy Policy specifically to support the way we treat psychological assessment information.

Due to the nature of these assessment reports we draw on the Australian Psychological Society’s Code of Ethics and the Australian Health Practitioners Regulation Agency (AHPRA) Psychology Board of Australia’s Guidelines in addition to the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

For details about the way RGF Staffing APEJ manages Personal Information generally, please review the RGF Staffing APEJ Privacy Policy here.

What information is collected?

When CMC carries out a psychological assessment on you to assist a prospective employer to make a fair selection decision or to give your current employer an accurate understanding of your potential we are collecting personal information about you ( “Personal Information”) as defined in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (“Privacy Act”) and the Australian Privacy Principles under the Privacy Act (“APP”).

Use of Personal Information collected

The assessment will be provided to the organisation who requested it for the purposes mentioned above. If the information is not collected in whole or part, the psychologist will not be able to provide the assessment report to the client organisation who requested it.

The client organisation requesting the report may need to send the report to its affiliated organisations overseas as part of their ordinary procedures for handling such information. Your consent to this will be requested at the time of undertaking the assessment.

Assessment reports are managed as confidential documents and are only accessed by those officers of the Company and client organisations who have a reasonable need to know and are provided the reports “in confidence”. The reports are used to add objective information to assist with human resource decisions about the individuals assessed.

The Company holds all original assessment materials, results and reports generated by the assessment process. The information is collected directly from you and held in secure storage. Similarly, the client organisation will hold the reports in secure storage. Sometimes the information collected may be used by us or the client organisation in technical research to review how the assessment process is functioning. We may process personal information and data for the purpose of using and refining assessment tools, industry benchmarking, research analysis, product development, system testing and maintenance. This is considered best practice and allows us to monitor and refine our assessments and process.

We are required by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) Psychologist Registration Board’s guidelines and code of conduct to ensure assessments and tools are psychometrically sound, therefore regular research and refinement is required to achieve this.

When such research is conducted, the information is de-identified and grouped together with other data so that an individual’s information cannot be recognised or reconstructed. This research may be presented in a manual, in form assessment tool changes or used in marketing material.

Client organisations may provide a position description, candidate specification, organisation chart or briefing on points of interest to them in relation to the assessment. This is the client organisation’s confidential information and intellectual property.

Data quality and Security

You provide the personal information, and are relied upon to disclose it accurately. It is the psychologist’s responsibility to administer and interpret the assessment tools accurately.

The information is held in secure storage separate from any other files and is accessed by the assessor and client officers with a reasonable need to know. The Company holds assessment reports for a minimum of 7 years, but may destroy them thereafter if it is unlikely that the assessee will return for re- assessment, or if the data is not needed for research. Any destruction of assessment information follows the practices for destroying confidential information.

Access and Correction

APPs 12 and 13 respectively provide an individual with the right to access and correct their Personal Information held by an organisation. If you would like specific access to your assessment information, you should contact the CMC who will direct you to our verbal feedback process. Access will be provided to you through feedback given by a psychologist at a mutually convenient time after the outcome of your candidacy is known.

The only exceptions to this are:

1) if the assessment is being undertaken expressly by the client organisation for its employees for developmental purposes in which case a developmental report may be prepared for the individual. One of the key reasons for this is to prevent the information obtained at the assessment from interfering with negotiations between the candidate and the potential employer. This is an exception to an individual’s right to access Personal Information under APP 12.3(e).

2) if the assessment is delivered through the use of automated candidate debrief reports, if this is an option it would only apply to bulk volume assessment processes such as bulk labour hire assessments.

You are also not offered a copy of your assessment report but can request access to a psychologist from CMC so that you obtain contemporary and relevant interpretations of assessment information and you are not left to try and interpret something new from a report written for a particular purpose at a particular point in time. This procedure is consistent with best practices in occupational testing specified by the Australian Psychological Society. An analogy to this would be a medical doctor interpreting any test results you have undertaken. This practice parallels the practice within client organisations whereby they consult the assessor before using an existing report for purposes other than the original one. To provide the report would also have the potential to expose the Company or the Clients intellectual property and commercially sensitive information. This is an exception to an individual’s right to access Personal Information under APP 12.3(j).

At the time of access, you will have to establish your identity via a standard validation process such as by providing your date of birth or other identifying information.

If you disagree with an opinion in your assessment you should advise the psychologist in the first instance. The feedback procedure includes a complete read through of the assessment data and any corrections or updates offered by you can be noted when made. If the amendments offered by you are material to the content or purpose of the assessment, then the means of resolving the difference between the assessor and you are pursued, for example through reference checking or some other form of observed behaviour or performance. The results of the resolution process are also noted in your file.

Further advice or complaints

Should you require further advice on any of the above matters, please approach the psychologist from CMC you have consulted with and then if you require further information or have a complaint regarding the way we handle your Personal Information, please contact our Privacy Officer at privacy@rgfstaffing.com.au.