This page tries to explain the rationale behind D&A's OHP tool. If anything is unclear, or you have more questions, please reach out to the IT team (it@diversityandability.com) to ask. You can also contact D&A's Data Protection Officer, Andrew, at dpo@diversityandability.com for a confidential discussion if you have a concern about how your personal data is being processed.
For the avoidance of doubt, filling in OHP with the details of all of the time that you work each day is mandatory.
We need to be explicit with you about the purposes to which this data will be put and what we're going to do with it and that's why we've written this document. There is also information below regarding your rights as data subjects. No changes will be made to this document, including changes to the purposes for data collection, without prior consultation with staff via the #ohp Slack channel and the monthly OHP check in meetings.
We will use the OHP data we collection from you for the following purposes:
Changes to this document have been recorded at the bottom of this page since 26th Sep 2024.
OHP is a tool built by D&A that helps us track how and where we're spending our resources. People are our most valuable resource, so that's our biggest focus with this tool.
In OHP we define a project as a clearly defined area of time spent at work. Each project is distinct, clear and trackable.
Usually, projects are linked to a well defined goal or outcome. For example, we track projects aiming to deliver a specific product or service to a specific client. We also track internal projects on things like working groups and team activities.
Employees are required to log all contracted hours in OHP by tracking the time spent on each project from the list. This includes general admin time, as well as other contracted hours time (including time off work due to illness and holiday).
At a company-wide level, we need to understand how long it takes us to deliver a project. With this information we know what our future capacity is and we can plan around it. We can hire more people to meet high demand, or ramp up our sales pitches when we have capacity to spare. We also know which projects take the most time to build and deliver, this helps us plan pricing and deadlines.
For example, let's say that OHP tells us that it takes 20 hours to plan, prepare, deliver, and review a piece of consultancy. We also know that we have 2 full-time staff trained to deliver that type of work. So we can say that we have a maximum capacity for just under 4 of these consultancy pieces each week.
At a team level, we need to know how efficient we're being, where our time is being spent across different types of activity.
For example, the IT team would like to know if more time is spent coding up new features or fixing bugs. If we're fixing lots of bugs, then maybe our time is better spent writing higher quality feature code with fewer bugs (not that we ever write code with bugs).
At an individual level, you can use OHP data to plan your time and to make sure you're spending the right amount of time on the things that are important.
For example, each team sets a number of continuing professional development (CPD) hours that should be used for training outside of your normal responsibilities. If you log your CPD hours in OHP then you can make sure that you're allocating the right amount of time.
The Leadership Team and your line manager may also use the data to have constructive feedback conversations about time spent on tasks, projects, or workflow. These conversations may be about improving efficiency or understanding how your time is spent on different parts of your role. Data from OHP would not be used in a formal disciplinary, probation review or dismissal process on their own as the first step, but may be used to start a feedback conversation. Your line manager or another member of the leadership team may use this data to set new goals and objectives around efficiency or your use of time at work. If goals are not met, these may be factors that lead to further action such as performance management plans or probation review meetings. The data from OHP can never give the full picture about performance, and so it will only be used as part of the conversation where you may be asked to describe your processes, approach and use of time at work.
We will also use OHP data to help us build training materials. For instance, we might want to provide a suggestion on how long a new employee spends onboarding a new AXS Passport client, OHP data will tell us on average how long that takes.
It is important to understand who has access to your data and when.
Team leads always have access to OHP data that their team has tracked. The Finance Team leads always have full access to all OHP data. The IT Director also always has full access to all OHP data.
Unless your line manager is also a team lead they will not have direct access to OHP data, but they might ask for specific information from a team lead in order to facilitate the constructive feedback conversations described above. The information provided will be the minimum required to help facilitate these conversations, for example, a conversation about a particular project will only need OHP data on that single project. Similarly, data might be given around a very specific time range (but across all projects). You will be involved in these conversations and will also have access to this data.
OHP asks you to fill in a short form, once for each item of work you do on a project. The form requires you to say which project you worked on, what day, and how many hours you worked on it. You might need to say what team you're a part of, but only if your regular responsibilities mean that you work across teams. Optionally, you can say if the hours were overtime hours, you can write a progress update, and you can tag the work with the types of activity you did.
The more information you give, the more data we have for our planning and forecasting but you should avoid references to third-party personal data in completing the form.
You do not have to fill in the form every hour, or even every day. As long as the record at the end of your week is accurate, then that's all that matters.
People with access to team data will be able to use a dashboard to view charts and statistics about that team, the projects, and the people working. This dashboard is that same as the one that you can access but it covers more data from more people.
People with full access to OHP data will also have the ability to download that data as a CSV file in order to carry out further exploration of the data. This exploration will be limited in scope and duration to protect your data as much as possible.
OHP data contains your personal data and we take the responsibility of processing this data very seriously. Below we've described our legal obligations under the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018, the actions we're taking to safeguard your data, and your rights over this data. If you have any questions then please get in touch with our data protection team (dp@diversityandability.com) or D&A's Data Protection Officer (dpo@diversityandabiltity.com)
D&A's legal basis for processing this data is legitimate interests. In determining this we have conducted a test to balance our need to collect and process this data with risks to your rights, and freedoms as required by law. As a company we need to understand how our employees are spending their time, it is only with this data that we can accurately understand our expenses and capacity, and we believe we can process this data safely and securely while respecting your rights.
D&A will process your data according to the Data Protection Principles:
You have the right to object to this processing. If you wish to object you should send your objection to Andrew, D&A's Data Protection Officer, at dpo@diversityandability.com. You should provide specific reasons why you are objecting to the processing of your data. These reasons should be based upon your particular situation.
You have the right to access your personal data held within OHP. If you wish to make an access request you should send it to the data protection team (dp@diversityandability.com) to make sure that it is received. All of the data that OHP holds on you can be accessed via your account. The track page shows a bar chart and a table of time records that you can query, OHP does not hold more data on you than these records display.
Here is a list of the audits and reports that we've conducted on OHP: