This privacy policy discloses the privacy practices of Quality Consultants of New Zealand Limited (“QCONZ”).

QCONZ is an audit and quality assurance specialist, and NZQA registered Private Training Establishment (PTE) operating in the primary sector. QCONZ also build data solution apps which include QCONZ FarmScope, QCONZ SYNC, QCONZ Locate, and QCONZ MilkingbyTime (MbT).

We understand that your personal information is important to you and we value your trust. This policy sets out how QCONZ handles your information.

We are bound by the Privacy Act 2020 (“Privacy Act”) and all supporting regulations.

In instances QCONZ collects personal information from customers, learners or staff we may share within our business to enable us to do our job and provide you with the best customer experience.

QCONZ also collects, processes and may host data for our clients (i.e. your dairy company or training institution). Our clients tell us what to do with this data, and we follow their instructions. This Privacy Policy does not describe what we do with data we collect on clients’ instructions, as their contracted service provider. If you are a customer of one of our clients’ and want to know how our client handles your information, you need to check their privacy policy.

The kinds of information that we collect and hold about you will depend on the nature of your dealings with us.

We may collect and hold information about you including:

Staff/Contractors/Prospective Employees:

• contact information and identification such as your name, contact phone number(s), email address(es), residential and/or business address(es);
• demographic information such as postcode, age, gender, ethnicity, and driver’s licence details;
• Employment information such as work history and areas of interest;
• location information during working hours using app and location technology, where staff have opted in only;
• logs of computer usage including interaction with operating system, all database systems, dates and times of changes.

Learners:

• contact information and identification such as your name, contact phone number(s), email address(es), employer, residential and/or business address(es);
• demographic information such as postcode, supply number, industry, age, gender, ethnicity.

Customers:

• contact information and identification such as your name, contact phone number(s), email address(es), residential and/or business address(es);
• demographic information such as postcode, supply number, industry, gender;
• your interactions with us including via social media, or publicly available information that you post or publish.

Providing someone else’s personal information:

If you provide us with personal information about another person (i.e. joint farm owner) please tell them about this Privacy Policy so they are aware that you have provided their information to us and that they can read this Policy to understand how their information will be handled.

We collect your personal information in order to:

• provide assistance and support including responding to enquiries, concerns or complaints;
• provide you with information, products or services; that you have requested (including via our contractors where applicable);
• inform you about our services, upcoming changes, improvements or new products and services, special offers and/or events from QCONZ;
• deliver services on behalf of third parties;
• undertake credit checks, invoicing and authorising and processing credit card transactions and payments, if applicable;
• assess and consider
  – your application as a prospective employee or contractor; or
  – your enrolment as a prospective learner.
• process staff PAYE;
• assist us to ensure the health and safety of our staff, visitors and learners;
• comply with our legal obligations, assisting government and enforcement bodies or regulators, or where otherwise required or authorised by or under law, or an order of a court or tribunal;
• if required, publish (including by posting on social media) customer testimonials which may contain personally identifiable information. We will obtain the customer’s consent prior to publishing the testimonial along with their name.
• publish photos with the photograph subjects consent, including consent from owners of buildings, land or infrastructure.

We may collect information in a variety of ways, including directly from you, for example:

• When you contact or interact with us whether in person, by email, phone, SMS or other forms of communication, or via our website or social media;
• When you complete a QCONZ online form, book a service of ours, make a general enquiry about our products or services;
• When you complete QCONZ form/s;
• When you participate in our events, sponsorships, surveys, promotions, or other activities;
• When you use our data-collecting devices, products or systems and software.

Sometimes, we may collect your information from third parties such as:

• Personal contact information from our clients (i.e. your dairy company / training organisation) of whom we are a contracted service provider to;
• Providers of data-collecting devices, products or systems that you use;
• Contractors performing a service or function on our behalf;
• Regulatory authorities;
• Marketing agencies and similar lists which are legally acquired by us; and
• Any other parties you refer us to or who refer us to you.

Whenever you visit or interact with a QCONZ website or another online platform of ours (“Platforms”), we, as well as any third-party service provider and/or advertiser, may use a variety of technologies that automatically or passively record information about how the Platform is accessed and used (“Usage Information”). Usage Information may include your IP address or other unique identifier for the device used to access a Platform (“Device Identifier”), browser type, “Device” type (computer, mobile phone, tablet or other device), operation system, application version, date and time of visit, pages viewed, preceding page views and your use of features or applications on the Platform such as interactions with connections or groups.

Usage Information helps us keep our Platforms relevant to users and allows us to tailor content to a user’s interests. Usage Information is generally non-identifying, but if we associate it with you as a specific and identifiable person, we will treat it as personal information.

We may use Device Identifiers to help us administer Platforms, diagnose problems with our servers, analyse trends, observe Platform usage and activity over time, help identify you and your shopping cart, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use.

Cookies (data files placed on a Device when it is used to visit a Platform) may be used to associate you with social media platforms like Facebook and, if you so choose, enable interaction between your activities on our Platforms and those social media platforms. We or our vendors may place cookies on your Device for security purposes, to facilitate site navigation and personalise your experience while visiting our Platforms (such as allowing us to select which ads or offers are most likely to appeal to you, based on your interests, preferences, location or demographic information).

To learn how you may manage cookies, or delete cookies that have already been installed, please refer to your browser’s help menu or instructions. If you disable or opt out of receiving cookies, some features and functions on our Platforms may not work properly or fully because we may not be able to recognise and associate you with your QCONZ account(s).

If you would like to know more about the use of anonymous browsing information to provide targeted advertisements for goods and services and your choices about not having this anonymous information used please visit:

– The Google Ads Preferences Manager where you can customize Google Display Network ads or opt-out of Google Analytics for Display Advertising; and

– www.networkadvertising.org/consumer/optout.asp, which provides more general information about your options and third-party service providers who collect anonymous information for advertising purposes.

Besides our staff, we may share this information with:

• third party contractors such as trainers, training assessors, and farm dairy assessors in order to deliver services to our clients;
• ISO auditors (who are bound by confidentiality agreements) to confirm training records;
• MPI for assessor recognition (i.e. training records);
• government and law enforcement agencies, bodies and regulators, or a dispute resolution body if we are required to disclose your information to such authorities in order to meet our obligations under law;
• your employer or former employer in order to conduct a reference check for potential QCONZ employment applications only;
• 3rd party mailing houses, printers, organisations in order to assist us to conduct promotions or market research.

We may hold information about you in digital and paper forms. We take reasonable steps to protect your information from misuse, loss, interference, and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

Some of the ways we protect your information include:

• external and internal premise security;
• restricting access to your information only to personnel who need it to perform their functions;
• utilising and maintaining information security applications to prevent unauthorised access or damage to electronically stored information, such as requiring identifiers and passwords, firewalls and anti-virus software;
• storing information entered on website in encrypted files such as Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol.
• when you pay online by credit card, QCONZ uses a compliant third-party payment gateway, PayPal to securely process the payment. Click here to view the Payment Privacy Policy. https://www.paypal.com/va/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-full
• maintaining physical security over paper records.

At the point that personal information is no longer required we destroy it by shredding any paper files. Digital information is digitally archived within systems and no longer available or visible.

We keep your personal information only as long as we need it for the purposes for which it was originally collected (or to which you have subsequently consented), for other legitimate purposes (such as regulatory compliance) and as permitted or required by applicable laws.

You may delete your account information by contacting us using our contact details set out at the bottom of this policy and QCONZ will delete the personal information it holds about you (unless we need to retain it for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy).

You have the right to access and ask us to correct any inaccurate personal information we hold about you. If you would like to review or correct your information, please contact us using the details set out at the bottom of this policy.

Access to your information may be refused in a number of circumstances, such as where the information relates to anticipated legal proceedings. If we deny or restrict your access, we will write to you to let you know why, unless, having regard to the grounds for the refusal, it would be unreasonable for us to do so. You may make a complaint about a refusal to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

We rely on the information that we hold about you to provide our products and services to you, and to perform our business functions. Therefore, it is very important that the information we hold is accurate, complete, up to date and relevant. This means that, from time to time, we may ask you if your information is still accurate and up to date. If you find that any information that we hold about you is incorrect, you should contact us immediately and we will take reasonable steps to correct it.

If you believe that your privacy has been compromised, or if you feel that we have breached the privacy laws, you are entitled to make a complaint. Complaints can be made by contacting the person or department you were dealing with, or by contacting us using our contact details set out at the bottom of this policy.

We endeavour to respond to you within 24 hours to acknowledge the complaint and explain how we will investigate it. We will try to resolve your complaint within 20 working days and write to you to explain the reasons for our decision. When this is not possible, we will contact you and let you know how long it will take for us to resolve your complaint.

If your complaint is not satisfactorily resolved, you can contact us to discuss your concerns or lodge a complaint with Office of the Privacy Commissioner by visiting www.privacy.org.nz, calling 0800 803 909 or using the online complaint form.

You can contact QCONZ by:
Email: admin@qconz.co.nz
Telephone: 0800 726 695
Post: QCONZ Limited, P O Box 12316, Hamilton 3248

We may change this Privacy Policy at any time by publishing the amended version on the QCONZ website.