Employee, subcontractors & volunteers confidentiality policy

Policy brief & purpose

We have designed Keira’s Kingdom Confidentiality Policy to help to explain how we expect our subcontractors, employees & volunteers to treat confidential information. Employees, subcontractors & volunteers will unavoidably receive and handle personal and private information about clients, partners and our charity. 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 client data)
  • Constitute the backbone of our charity

Scope

This policy affects all trustees, employees, subcontractors & volunteers 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  • Unpublished financial information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 clients, partners and vendors
  • Patents, formulas or new technologies
  • Client and customer lists (existing and prospective)
  • Data entrusted to our charity 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  • Unpublished goals, forecasts and initiatives marked as confidential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, subcontractors & volunteers may have various levels of authorized access to confidential information.

What employees, subcontractors & volunteers 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, subcontractors & volunteers when it’s necessary and authorized
  • Keep confidential documents stored in a locked device, i.e. laptop, etc.
  • Not discuss clients with other clients or employees, subcontractors or volunteers, in earshot of others

What employees, subcontractors & volunteers shouldn’t do

  • Use confidential information for any personal benefit or profit
  • Disclose confidential information to anyone outside of our charity, or to anyone at all who isn’t a part of our charity. This includes discussing confidential information with other clients
  • Replicate confidential documents and files and store them on insecure devices

When employees, subcontractors & volunteers stop working for our charity, they’re obliged to return any confidential files and devices belonging to Keira’s Kingdom.

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

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, for example a safeguarding
  • If our charity examines a venture or partnership that requires disclosing some information (within legal boundaries)

We’re bound to avoid disclosing more information than needed.

Disciplinary consequences

Employees, subcontractors or volunteers 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, subcontractors or volunteers who wilfully or regularly breach our confidentiality guidelines. We may also have to punish any unintentional breach of this policy depending on its frequency and seriousness. We’ll terminate employees, subcontractors or volunteers who repeatedly disregard this policy, even when they do so unintentionally.

This policy is binding even after separation of employment, contract ending and volunteering ending.

Review history

  • Updated 1 May 2022
  • Updated 1 May 2023
  • Updated 1 May 2024
  • Updated 1 May 2025

M. Conway
CEO