DATA PROTECTION NOTICE
for the 2024 European Working Conditions Survey

As an EU Agency, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (or Eurofound) embraces the need to protect your personal data. We, therefore, undertake to process it, as data controller, with respect to the applicable law1.

If after reading this notice you still have questions or doubts on the processing of your data, please contact us at dataprotectionofficer@eurofound.europa.eu. We will reply to you as soon as we can but always within one month.

What is the European Working Conditions Survey?

The European Working Conditions Survey (or EWCS) is a survey which takes place every five years and covers different aspects of working life, such as working time, work organisation, work-life balance and work-related health issues. Nearly 50,000 workers across 36 European countries will be interviewed about their working conditions.

The data collected will provide invaluable, up-to-date and objective information for European policy makers and researchers about working conditions and the quality of work and employment in Europe, to help improve working lives for everyone. The first results from this study will be available in 2025.

For further information about the EWCS, please visit https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/surveys/2024/european-working-conditions-survey-2024.

Who is carrying out the survey?

The survey is being carried out by Verian on behalf of Eurofound, the data controller. Verian, the data processor, is a market research company which adheres to highest ethical standards and professional codes of conduct, including the WAPOR2 and ESOMAR3.

How have I been chosen?

You have been randomly selected as part of a rigorous scientific process so that we can speak to a representative sample of all workers in your country’s population. Everyone who has been invited to take part, including you, has a known, non-zero probability of being selected. The random sample has been drawn either using a register of individuals or of households, or based on enumeration, depending on the country.

What personal data will be collected?

The following data will be processed:

  1. your telephone, gender, postal address and age will be processed in order to invite you to participate in the survey;
  2. any personal data which you may provide while answering the survey which focus on the different aspects of working life, including (i) how you work, (ii) your working hours, (iii) work-life balance, and (iv) the way work affects your health;
  3. data on your health status as well as your ethnic origin;
  4. information on whether or not you have been discriminated against at work on several different grounds, or whether or not you have been faced with undesirable conduct at work (a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question). Please note you will NOT be asked to provide personal data or factual information related to these experiences;
  5. information on whether or not you have voted in the last parliamentary elections. Please note that factual information on your political opinion will NOT be collected;
  6. your name and email address if you consent to be re-contacted for follow-up research;
  7. any information that you provide by filling in forms on our website, including when reporting a problem with our website;
  8. any information you provide us, including correspondence, when you contact us;
  9. details of your visits to our website including, but not limited to, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data, or otherwise and the resources that you access; and
  10. Information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system, and browser type, for system administration. This is used to generate statistical data about our users' browsing actions and patterns.

Please be informed that if you provide your contact details, these will be linked with your answers. If you do not provide your contact details for follow-up surveys, your answers to this survey will be anonymous and it will be impossible for Eurofound or Verian to identify you, directly or indirectly, from them. In any case, we would like to clarify that the results of the research will be anonymised (i.e., statistical information only), and you will NOT be identifiable, directly or indirectly, in any published results.

All personal data collected and further processed in relation with the EWCS 2024 survey is necessary for the performance of research tasks carried out by Eurofound in the public interest4, as well as to comply with legal obligations5 which were entrusted to Eurofound by its Founding Regulation6.

Processing of health data and data relating to your ethnic origin are justified for scientific research purposes7.

Any additional processing of your personal data (e.g., follow-up purposes) will be done only if you have given your consent8.

With regard to any data which you provide when contacting us (e.g., when exercising your data protection rights), it is necessary to comply with the legal obligation to answer your request9.

Finally, details of your visits to our website as well as information about your computer will be collected and further processed through your consent10. For more information, please read our Cookies Policy.

Who will process your data?

Your personal data will only be accessed by duly authorised staff members within Eurofound and Verian, whose staff, in the performance of their duties, abide by statutory or contractual confidentiality obligations.

For how long will your personal data be kept?

The following retention periods apply:

  1. Personal data will be retained for 12 months after the end of the project (i.e., until October 2025).
  2. Should you have agreed to be re-contacted for further research, your name and contact details will be kept for two years from the date you provided these details.

Once retention periods have been reached, personal data will be disposed of in ways that ensure their confidential nature is not compromised.

How is your personal data protected?

Several security controls have been put in place to protect your personal data from unauthorised access, use or disclosure. Thus, your data will be stored on computer systems, located in the European Union, with access permitted uniquely for authorised staff.

Your responses will be stored separately from your personal information and will be used solely for research purposes.

Your participation, together with your individual responses to the questions, will be kept strictly confidential. The results of the research will be anonymised, statistical information only and you will not be identifiable in any published results.

Moreover, Verian aligns its working practices to the internationally agreed standards on international market research quality standard (ISO20252), international standard for quality management systems (ISO 9001) and international standard for information security management (ISO 27001).

Do we transfer your data to outside the EU?

Processing of your personal data will, in principle, take place within the EU or within the European Economic Area (EEA11). Nonetheless, some processing takes place in the UK12 since, in some situations, our contractor, Verian, is transferring your contact details (name and/or postal address) to Greens a UK-based digital printing company13 in order to deliver invitation letters for your participation in our survey.

What are your rights?

Within the limits set by the EUDPR, you have the right to access, rectify, erase and/or port your personal data, to restrict or object to the processing of your personal data, and to withdraw your consent (if obtained). Just note that withdrawal of your consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing while your consent was valid.

To exercise the above rights, please write to PublicCompliance@veriangroup.com. Your request is free of charge. However, if it is manifestly unfounded or excessive, Eurofound, as data controller, may refuse to act on it.

You also have the right to raise a complaint with the European Data Protection Supervisor should you consider that the processing of tour personal data is in violation of the law. You will find more information here.

Notification of Material Changes

We reserve the right to occasionally update or change this notice to reflect changes in the processing. We encourage you to periodically review this notice to be informed of how we are processing and protecting your personal information.

Contact

Questions, comments and requests regarding this survey are welcomed and should be addressed to the Surveys Officer, Sophia.MacGoris@eurofound.europa.eu.

Last updated: 10 May 2024

1 Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data by the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies and on the free movement of such data (or the EUDPR).
2 More information can be found here.
3 More information can be found here.
4 Article 5(1)(a) of the EUDPR.
5 Article 5(1)(b) of the EUDPR.
6 Regulation (EU) 2019/127 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 January 2019 establishing the European Foundation for the improvement of living and working conditions (Eurofound), and repealing Council Regulation (EEC) No 1365/75, in particular Articles 1 and 2 thereof.
7 Article 10(2)(j) of the EUDPR.
8 Article 5(1)(d) of the EUDPR.
9 Article 5(1)(b) of the EUDPR.
10 Articles 6 and 9 of the Directive on privacy and electronic communications as well as Article 5(1)(d) of the EUDPR.
11 The EEA comprises the 27 Member States of the EU plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
12 UK is considered an adequate country as per the decision taken by the European Commission in June 2021. Transfers of data to the UK are, therefore, lawful under Article 47 of the EUDPR and the Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2021/1772 of 28 June 2021 pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the adequate protection of personal data by the United Kingdom.
13 See more information here.