Orchard remuneration survey privacy statement

The Orchard Talent Group Pty Ltd, including its Orchard Advisory practice (Orchard, we, us or our), conducts remuneration benchmarking surveys for organisations across Australia.

This privacy statement explains how we collect, use, hold and disclose information through the Orchard remuneration survey portal at remsurvey.orchardtalent.com.au.

1. About the survey

The Orchard remuneration survey enables participating organisations to provide information about executive remuneration and, where they choose, board remuneration.

Orchard uses the information contributed by participating organisations to create remuneration benchmarking datasets, analysis and reports.

Participation is by invitation. There is no public registration process. A participant may also invite an appropriate colleague from their organisation to participate.

2. Information we collect about you

If you register as a participant, we collect information including:

• your full name
• your work email address
• your mobile number
• your organisation
• your position or role within the organisation
• information you voluntarily provide about whether you would like Orchard to contact you about purchasing benchmarking reports or related Orchard services.

Your work email address identifies your account.

Your mobile number is used to verify your identity and send one-time login codes.

3. Information we collect about your organisation

We collect information about the participating organisation including:

• ABN and legal entity name
• annual revenue
• sector and sub-sector
• head office location
• other classification information required to appropriately benchmark the organisation.

Organisation details may be checked against the Australian Business Register.

4. Information about executives and other role incumbents

As part of the survey, participants provide information about executive positions within their organisation.

This may include:

• role title
• reporting level
• base remuneration
• superannuation
• short-term incentives
• long-term incentives
• allowances or other remuneration components
• full-time equivalent status
• gender, where the organisation chooses to provide it.

Orchard does not ask participants to provide the name of the person occupying the role.

However, because some executive positions are occupied by only one person, information about a role, organisation and remuneration may in some circumstances be capable of being associated with an identifiable individual.

Gender information is optional and is collected to support analysis of remuneration outcomes, including gender pay gap analysis.

5. Board information

Participating organisations may also provide board remuneration information.

Board information is generally collected by position rather than by individual. For example, where multiple directors receive the same fee, Orchard records the position and fee structure rather than creating a separate record for each director.

Gender may be recorded for singular positions such as Chair or Deputy Chair. Organisations may also provide aggregate numbers of directors by gender without identifying individual directors.

6. How we use the information

We use information collected through the survey to:

• administer the survey and participant accounts
• verify participants and participating organisations
• review, validate and categorise submissions
• identify errors or anomalies in submitted information
• create and maintain remuneration benchmarking datasets
• analyse remuneration practices and trends
• produce benchmarking reports and related advisory analysis
• communicate with participants about the survey
• maintain records of information submitted to Orchard
• protect the security and integrity of the survey platform
• contact you about Orchard reports or services where you have indicated that you are open to that contact.

Participation in the survey does not, by itself, require you or your organisation to purchase a report or other Orchard service.

7. Review and de-identification of submissions

Information submitted through the portal is not automatically included in the benchmarking dataset.

An Orchard consultant reviews each completed submission and may correct, standardise or classify information before committing it to the benchmarking dataset. Orchard retains a record of the information originally submitted and any revisions made during this process.

When a record is committed to the benchmarking dataset, the organisation's name is removed from that record and replaced with an internal Orchard identifier.

This process reduces the identifying information contained in the working benchmarking dataset. Orchard nevertheless retains the ability to associate that identifier with an organisation and accordingly does not represent this process as irreversible anonymisation.

8. Benchmarking reports

Orchard's reports are intended to present remuneration information at an aggregated or benchmark level.

Orchard does not intend to publish participant contact information, organisation names or individual employee names in benchmarking reports.

Where Orchard determines that a proposed output could reasonably identify an organisation or individual, Orchard may aggregate, suppress, combine or otherwise adjust the information before publication.

9. Where information is stored

The survey platform and associated information are hosted in Sydney, Australia on infrastructure controlled by Orchard.

10. Service providers and overseas disclosure

Orchard uses a limited number of service providers to operate the survey.

These presently include:

• Resend, located in the United States, which receives participant names and email addresses when sending certain transactional emails such as registration confirmations, thank-you messages or login alerts
• mobilemessage.com.au, located in Australia, which receives a participant's mobile number and a numeric one-time login code
• the Australian Business Register, which receives an ABN for validation purposes.

Resend is currently the only service provider used for the survey that receives participant information outside Australia.

By registering for the survey, you acknowledge that your name and work email address may be disclosed to this overseas service provider for these limited operational purposes.

11. Security

Orchard uses security measures designed to protect survey information.

These include:

• passwordless access using a registered email address and one-time code
• expiry and single-use controls for login codes
• rate limiting of authentication attempts
• login alerts when an account is accessed from a new device
• server-side restrictions designed to ensure participants can access only their own organisation's information
• excluding remuneration figures and personal information from application logs
• security review during each stage of development.

No system can be guaranteed to be completely secure. Orchard will manage any suspected or confirmed information security incident in accordance with its legal obligations.

12. How long we keep information

Under the current survey design, information that directly identifies a participant or participating organisation within a survey submission is retained for 12 months after publication of the relevant survey report and is then removed from the submission.

Revision history and committed benchmarking records may be retained beyond that period as part of Orchard's historical benchmarking dataset.

13. Communications about Orchard services

During the survey, you may choose to indicate that you are interested in discussing the remuneration report, benchmarking services or other relevant Orchard services.

Where you do so, Orchard may contact you about that stated interest.

Commercial electronic communications will include an appropriate way to opt out of receiving further marketing communications.

Your decision about commercial communications does not affect your ability to participate in the survey.

14. Access, correction and questions

You may contact Orchard if you:

• wish to access or correct personal information Orchard holds about you
• believe information you have submitted is incorrect
• have a privacy concern or complaint
• have questions about how information collected through the remuneration survey is handled.

Contact

The Orchard Talent Group Pty Ltd, Orchard Advisory

Email: advisory@orchardtalent.com.au

Telephone: 02 9157 6222