Overview

This staff privacy policy (Staff Privacy Policy) applies to personal information relating to your employment or engagement (prospective, current or former) with Accessible Family Law Pty Ltd ABN 33 688 416 597 (we, us, our), and as collected, handled and held by us acting as your employer, as described below.

This Staff Privacy Policy explains what information we collect about you, how we’ll use that information, who we’ll share it with, the circumstances of when we’ll share it and what steps we’ll take to make sure it stays private and secure.

You should read this Staff Privacy Policy alongside your employment contract or engagement terms, as these include additional sections and information relating to the use and disclosure of information. This Staff Privacy Policy should also be read alongside our general privacy policy (General Privacy Policy), as amended from time to time.

Wherever we’ve said ‘you’ or ‘your’, this means you, or any authorised person who engages with us on your behalf.

Your responsibilities

The Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act) regulates how we collect, use, store and disclose personal information.

As our employee, you are responsible for ensuring you treat any personal information that you collect, store, use or disclose in the course of performing your role in the manner required by your employment contract and our General Privacy Policy. If you are handling an employee’s personal information (for example, in the course of performing payroll or other administrative functions), you must also comply with the terms of this Staff Privacy Policy.

Failure to do this will be taken seriously and may result in disciplinary action. This may include, in appropriate circumstances, suspension or termination of employment.

What is personal information?

In this Staff Privacy Policy, ‘personal information’ has the meaning set out in applicable privacy laws, including the Privacy Act. In general terms, personal information is information (whether fact or opinion) about an individual who is identified or reasonably identifiable from that information or other information combined with that information.

Some types of personal information are classified as ‘sensitive information’ and/or ‘health information’, which are subject to additional protection under the Privacy Act. Sensitive information may include information about your racial origin and health status, and health information may include information about a health-related service you have had or will receive, including test results and appointment details.

Collection of information

What types of personal information do we collect?

We will only collect your information in line with relevant regulations and law. We may collect it from a range of sources, and it may relate to any of the roles you apply for, currently hold or have held in the past both within and outside our firm. We may also collect information about you when you interact with us (e.g., call us, visit our websites, or use services we make available to you in your worker capacity).

Some of your information will come directly from you (e.g. when you provide ID to verify your identity or right to work or if you complete a background check with us). It can also come from your previous employers, recruiters, other companies, or other sources from which you have asked us to obtain information. We might also get some of it from publicly available sources.

The information we collect may include (to the extent permitted by local laws):

(a) personal information that you provide to us, such as:
- i. personal details, including your name, gender, date and place of birth and employment history;
- ii. contact details, including your address, email address and phone number;
- iii. next of kin and emergency contact details;
- iv. information concerning your identity and eligibility to work with us, which may be contained in a Verification of Identity (VOI) report issued by an external VOI provider, and tax file number;
- v. information concerning any qualifications you hold, including your university education, transcripts, testamur, professional certifications (such as practising certificates), résumés or curriculum vitaes that include details of your qualifications and work experience;
- vi. information necessary to provide you with wages and employee benefits, including your bank account details;
- vii. research, information and opinions expressed when participating in employee surveys; and
- viii. other personal information about you that you give us by filling in forms or by communicating with us, whether face to face, by phone, email, online, or otherwise;
(b) sensitive information which may be obtained from WorkCover insurance details, including health data such as medical diagnosis from a doctor, level of impairment, medical condition, disabilities, medical-related absence records, health and sickness records or confirmation you are able to perform a given position (as applicable); and
(c) in the case of prospective employees, we may also collect:
- i. information contained in your application or résumé, recorded during any interview, or obtained through any pre-employment checks such as police checks or checks for convictions or findings of guilt;
- ii. information you’ve asked us to collect for you or we collect as part of our vetting process (e.g., work references from previous employers and information about your previous roles with us);
- iii. information we use to identify and authenticate you (e.g., your signature, additional information we receive from external sources, including recruitment companies, that we need for compliance purposes); and
- iv. other information we require to comply with our legal obligations (including information regarding your right to work in Australia); and
(d) information we collect or generate about you, such as:
- i. CCTV footage and recordings;
- ii. opinions about your suitability for a particular position or role;
- iii. investigations data (e.g., fraud checks, content and metadata related to relevant exchanges of information between and among individuals or organisations, including emails, voicemail, instant messages, and any opinion you express in relation to any issues that are the subject of an investigation);
- iv. complaints, disciplinary and grievance information;
- v. succession planning and workforce management data including information about your individual performance in roles you held with us;
- vi. records of correspondence and other communications between us, including email, instant messages, and social media communications; and/or
- vii. information that we need to support our regulatory obligations and risk management (e.g., information about transaction details, detection of any suspicious and unusual activity and information about parties connected to you or these activities such as sanctions checks).

How do we collect personal information?

We collect personal information directly from you, including when you:

(a) provide it to us in the course of your employment with us;
(b) apply to work with us or are engaged by us as a contractor; and
(c) make inquiries about us or our products or services or otherwise communicate with us by email, by telephone, in person, via a website or otherwise.

Where it is reasonable and practicable to do so, we will only collect personal information about you from you directly and not from third parties. In limited circumstances, we may collect personal information about you from publicly available sources (such as the Internet) and from third parties (such as external VOI providers, mutual contacts, recruitment companies, or your referees provided during the recruitment process).

Can you choose not to disclose your personal information?

If you do not provide us with personal information which we request or use a pseudonym, we will not be able to employ or engage you for a specific role, provide you with our services in the matter you wish (or at all), communicate with you or respond to your enquiries in the manner requested (or at all).

How do we use your personal information?

We only collect, use, handle and disclose your information where reasonably necessary for our business functions or activities and for the primary purposes set out below, or for other related (or directly related) purposes which you might reasonably expect us to collect, handle, use and disclose your personal information.

This includes to:

(a) verify your identity (for example, during the recruitment process);
(b) consider you for a job with us, or other relationships including by assessing your right to work in Australia;
(c) provide you with access to our internal IT systems, online platforms and other technologies relevant to your engagement with us;
(d) administer and maintain personnel records, including relating to your performance (such as through performance reviews or appraisals);
(e) perform payroll functions, including paying and reviewing remuneration;
(f) manage leave entitlements and absence records;
(g) provide, administer and review benefits, including superannuation, pension and retirement savings, share plan, private health insurance, life insurance, accidental insurance, permanent health insurance, and occupational health services;
(h) contact you or your emergency contacts in the event of an emergency;
(i) collect, use, handle or disclose for security, staff vetting, business continuity and risk management;
(j) maintain medical records relevant to occupational health and safety matters and your ability to work;
(k) pursue disciplinary and grievance matters;
(l) provide information to future employers, regulators and, if necessary, government bodies;
(m) prevent, detect and investigate suspicious, fraudulent, criminal or other activity that may cause you, us or others harm, including in relation to our products and services;
(n) comply with our legal obligations such as notifying you of matters that we may be required by law to do so;
(o) contact you regarding any of the above, including via electronic messaging such as SMS and email, by mail, by phone or in any other lawful manner.

We’ll also use your information to meet our compliance obligations, to comply with other laws and regulations and to share with regulators and other authorities to which we may be subject.

How we make decisions about you

We do not use automated systems to help us make decisions as part of our recruitment processes.

Who we might share your information with

We may share your information with other third parties, in connection with the purposes described above (see the “How do we use your personal information?” section).

This may include disclosing your personal information to the following types of third parties:

(a) any potential third party acquirer of our business or assets, and advisors to that third party;
(b) our professional advisers (such as lawyers, accountants or auditors) and insurers;
(c) our employees, contractors and third party service providers who assist us in performing our functions and activities, e.g. payment systems operators, payroll providers, financial institutions, cloud service providers, data storage providers, shipping companies, telecommunications providers, VOI providers and IT support services providers;
(d) third parties to whom you have authorised us to disclose your information (e.g. referees); and
(e) any other person as required or permitted by law.

If we disclose your personal information to third parties we will use reasonable commercial efforts to ensure that such third parties only use your personal information as reasonably required for the purpose of disclosure and in a manner consistent with applicable laws, for example (where commercially practical) by including suitable privacy and confidentiality clauses in our agreement with a third party service provider to which we disclose your personal information.

Whilst we will always maintain robust privacy practices, we are not responsible for the privacy practices of third parties, including our other third party suppliers. We suggest that you review their relevant privacy policy to satisfy yourself as to how they protect and handle your personal information.

How long we’ll keep your information

Generally, we will retain your personal information for the period necessary for the purposes for which your personal information was collected (as outlined in this Staff Privacy Policy) unless a longer retention period is required by law or if it is reasonably necessary for us to comply with our legal obligations, resolve a dispute or maintain security. For example, we’ll normally keep your core employment data for a period of seven years from the end of our relationship with you, unless otherwise required by law. This enables us to comply with legal and regulatory requirements or use it where we need to for our necessary business functions and/or activities purposes such as dealing with any disputes or concerns that may arise.

If you have applied for a job with us, and were unsuccessful, we will retain any personal data collected in line with local regulations, or otherwise for a period of 6 months from the date you are formally rejected where legally permitted to do so.

If we don’t need to retain information for this period of time, we may destroy, delete or anonymise it more promptly.

Transferring your information overseas

Your information may be transferred to and stored in locations outside of Australia, specifically to our document management system provider LEAP, who operates data centres located in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. LEAP is subject to the United Kingdon General Data Protection Regulation, which we believe has a greater degree of protection as compared to the Australian privacy laws at this point in time. We will take such steps as are reasonable in the circumstances to ensure that the overseas recipients in that country do not breach Australian privacy laws in relation to the personal information we provide to them and they hold.

In some situations, overseas recipients may be required to disclose information which we share with them under a foreign law. In some countries the law might compel us to share certain information, e.g. with tax authorities. Even in these cases, we’ll only share your information with people who have the right to see it. Where this occurs, we will not be responsible for such disclosure, though we will take reasonable steps to ensure your personal information is protected.

How we keep your information secure

We use a range of measures and take reasonable steps to keep your personal information safe and secure and protected from unauthorised access, loss, disclosure or misuse, which may include encryption and other forms of security. These range of measure include:

(a) taking measures to protect the physical security of our premises, document management systems, database and records; and
(b) implementing technical measures, such as firewalls, computer passwords, data back-up and anti-virus software.

We require our staff and any third parties who carry out any work on our behalf to comply with appropriate compliance standards including obligations to protect any information and applying appropriate measures for the use and transfer of information.

However, particularly for electronic data stores and due to the fact that the Internet is inherently insecure, we cannot guarantee the security of transmission of personal information disclosed to us online. Accordingly, you transmit your personal information to us online at your own risk and are encouraged to exercise care in sending personal information via the internet. Please notify us immediately if you know or reasonably suspect that your personal information has been subject to any data breach, breach of security or other unauthorised activity.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we exclude all liability (including in negligence) for the consequences of any unauthorised access to, modification of, disclosure of, misuse of or loss or corruption of any personal information.

Your rights

You have a number of rights in relation to the information that we hold about you, which differ depending upon the location in which you reside or work. These rights include:

(a) the right to access information we hold about you and to obtain information about how we process it. We will provide access to that information in accordance with the Privacy Act, subject to any exemptions that may apply; and
(b) the right to request that we rectify your information if it’s inaccurate or incomplete.

If you believe that personal information we hold about you is incorrect, incomplete or inaccurate, then you may request us to amend it by contacting us at admin@accfamlaw.com.au. Where we agree that the information needs to be corrected, we will update it. If we do not agree, you can request that we make a record of your correction request with the relevant information.

You can also ask us to notify any third parties that we provided incorrect information to about the correction. We’ll try and help where we can – if we can’t, then we’ll let you know.

Obtaining a copy of this Staff Privacy Policy

You have the right to understand our policies and practices regarding data held by us, and request a copy of this or other privacy policies. If you would like a copy of this Staff Privacy Policy in a different form, please contact us and we will try to meet your request.

Contact us

You can exercise your rights by contacting us using the details below:

Email: admin@accfamlaw.com.au

Phone: +61 3 7002 6222

Post: Accessible Family Law, level 5, 11 Eastern Road, South Melbourne VIC 3205

Making a complaint

If you believe we have not complied with the Privacy Act or applicable privacy laws or you have a complaint about the way in which we have processed or handle your personal information, please contact us at admin@accfamlaw.com.au.

If you are not happy with our response, please let us know and we will aim to address any further concerns you have.

You also have a right to complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner using the details set out below if you are unhappy with the way your complaint is handled internally (though we would ask you to exhaust all internal escalation routes first).

Office of the Australian Information Commissioner

Address: GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2001

Phone: 1300 363 992

Online: www.oaic.gov.au

Email: enquiries@oaic.gov.au

What we need from you

You’re responsible for making sure the information you give us is accurate and up to date, and you must tell us if anything changes as soon as possible. If you provide information for another person (e.g., where you provide information or details of dependents and or beneficiaries for healthcare or life insurance coverage), you’ll need to direct them to this Staff Privacy Policy and make sure they agree to us using their information as described in it.

The absence or inaccuracy of any records may affect the provision of certain benefits, the performance of any contracts that we have entered into with you, or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations.

Contract and Staff Privacy Policy review date

We may change or update this Staff Privacy Policy from time to time to keep up to date with legal requirements and the way we operate our business. An up-to-date version of this Staff Privacy Policy is available at any time in the Staff Policy Microsoft OneDrive. You will also receive a copy of this Staff Privacy Policy as part of the onboarding process. You are responsible for reviewing this Staff Privacy Policy periodically and informing yourself of any changes. We suggest that you check back regularly. If we make significant changes to our Staff Privacy Policy, we will seek to inform you by email.

Last Updated: 3 March 2026

ACCESSIBLE FAMILY LAW Staff Privacy Policy