Privacy policy
Hello, we’re Vmax Consulting, a brilliant bunch of leadership performance experts. In the course of undertaking, publishing and promoting our services we inevitably gather information on people.
We’re not email sellers, information traders or ambulance chasers and we are absolutely committed to making sure any information you give us is kept safe and sound.
This Privacy Policy explains when and why we might collect information on you, and what happens to it if we do. It’s quite long, but it’s also important, so please read it carefully.
Information we collect
Information You Provide to Us
It’s probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us! The amount and type of information depends on the context and how we use the information. Here are some examples:
Contact information: If we’ve been communicating, then we’ll have information for you including your name, telephone number and email address. In addition we probably know your current and previous job titles and the companies where you have worked.
Case studies, testimonials and feedback: Lots of lovely people have given us feedback over the years, and as you might expect, we keep these (close to our hearts) and often tell other people about them!
Transaction and Billing Information: If you buy something from us you may provide additional personal and payment information that is required to process the transaction and your payment, such as your name, credit card information, and contact information.
Interactions on our website: You may provide us with information about you by interacting with us on our website. For example, if you like a post, follow our blog or write a comment on a blog post that includes information about you, we will have that information.
Communications with us: You may also provide us information when you respond to surveys, fill in an online form, request information or subscribe to one of our mailing lists.
Information collected during the provision of consultancy services: If we are working with your business, we might talk to you to get more information, to gather your feedback (perhaps on a colleague, the organisation, or even yourself) or to help you with a project. In these cases you will have given us information so we can contact you, along with the comments themselves.
Information We Collect Automatically
Any information we collect automatically is because we use online services to stay looking as slick and professional as we are in real life. Most of this is collected by the services we use rather than us per-se, but better to be safe than sorry…
Log Information: Our service providers collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information.
Usage Information: We collect information about your usage of our online services. For example, we collect information about the actions that site administrators and users perform on a site – in other words, who did what, when and to what thing on a site. We also collect information about what happens when you use our online services (e.g., page views, document searches, event bookings, survey completions, along with information about your device (e.g., screen size, name of cellular network, and mobile device manufacturer). This information is used to provide our services to you as well as to get insights on how people use our services so we can make them better.
Location Information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, calculate how many people visit our Services from certain geographic regions. We may also collect information about your precise location via our mobile apps (when, for example, you post a photograph with location information) if you allow us to do so through your mobile device operating system’s permissions.
Stored Information: We may access information stored on your mobile device via our mobile app. We access this stored information through your device operating system’s permissions. For example, if you are replying to a blog post and you give us permission to access the photographs on your mobile device’s camera roll, our services may access the photos stored on your device when you upload a really amazing photograph to our website.
Information from Cookies & Other Technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and emails. Our website and online services use cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help us identify and track visitors, usage, and access preferences for our services, as well as track and understand email campaign effectiveness and to deliver targeted ads.
how and why we use your information
- To provide our Services – for example to provide you with consultancy or executive coaching support, assessment information on you, your colleagues or your organisation.
- To further develop and improve our services – for example by using your feedback to tailor our services to you personally, or for our other customers.
- To monitor and analyse trends and better understand how people interact with our services, which helps us improve our services and make them easier to use.
- To measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising, and better understand user retention and attrition–for example, we may analyse how many individuals booked on an event after receiving a marketing message or the characteristics of those who continue to use our services after a certain length of time.
- To monitor and prevent any problems with our services, protect the security of our services, detect and prevent illegal activities, and protect the rights and property of Vmax Consulting and our customers and others.
- To communicate with you, for example through an email, about offers and promotions offered by Vmax Consulting and others we think will be of interest to you, solicit your feedback, or keep you up to date on Vmax Consulting and our services.
- To personalise your experience using our services and target our marketing messages to groups (for example those who have a particular job title or work in a particular industry or geographical location).
Legal bases for collecting and using information
A note here for those in the European Union about our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws, which is that our use of your information is based on the grounds that:
- The use is necessary in order to fulfil our commitments to you or your business as described in a Statement of Work or other agreement with you, or for the purposes of administration in the management of those commitments. For example in order to enable us to communicate with contributors to a project, or charge you accurately for work undertaken; or
- The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation; or
- The use is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or those of another person or business; or
- We have a legitimate interest in using your information – for example, to provide and update our services, to improve our services so that we can offer you an even better experience, to safeguard our services, to communicate with you, to measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising, to monitor and prevent any problems with our services, and to personalise your experience; or
- You have given us your consent–for example before we place certain cookies on your device when accessing our website, or if you signed up for email updates.
How Long We Keep Information
We generally discard information about you when we no longer need the information for the purposes for which we collect and use it – which are described in the section above on How and Why We Use Information – and we are not legally required to continue to keep it.
For example, information used to assess an individual’s performance as part of a development programme would be retained for the duration of the development programme and a reasonable amount of time afterwards to allow us to conduct follow up assessments and make comparisons.
Once deleted, content may remain on our backups until purged.
Sharing Information
How We Share Information
We do not sell our users’ private personal information.
We share information about you in the limited circumstances spelled out below and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy:
- Subsidiaries, Employees, and Independent Contractors: We may disclose information about you to our subsidiaries, our employees, and individuals who are our independent contractors that need to know the information in order to help us provide our services or to process the information on our behalf. We require our subsidiaries, employees, and independent contractors to follow this Privacy Policy for personal information that we share with them.
- Third Party Vendors: We may share information about you with third party vendors who need to know information about you in order to provide their services to us, or to provide their services to you. This group includes vendors that help us provide our Services to you (like booking websites that provide tickets for our events, postal and email delivery services that help us stay in touch with you and survey hosting services that allow us to gather feedback for you), those that assist us with our marketing efforts (e.g. by providing tools for identifying a specific marketing target group or improving our marketing campaigns), those that help us understand and enhance our services (like analytics providers).
- Legal Requests: We may disclose information about you in response to a court order, or other governmental request.
To Protect Rights, Property, and Others: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Vmax Consulting, our customers, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose information related to the emergency without delay. - Business Transfers: In connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, or in the unlikely event that Vmax Consulting goes out of business, user information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy.
- With Your Consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, we may be collecting your feedback as part of the provision of our services or we may share your information with third parties with which you authorise us to do so, such as the publication of a testimonial or case study.
- Aggregated or De-Identified Information: We may share information that has been aggregated or reasonably de-identified, so that the information could not reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our services.
Information Shared Publicly
Information that you choose to make public is – you guessed it – disclosed publicly.
That means, of course, that information like your “Likes” and comments on our websites, are all available to others!
Public information may also be indexed by search engines or used by third parties.
Please keep all of this in mind when deciding what you would like to share.
Your Choices and Rights
You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:
Limit the Information that You Provide: You can choose not to provide optional information, profile information, and transaction and billing information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information we may not be able to provide some services.
Opt-Out of Electronic Communications: You may opt out of receiving promotional messages from us. Just follow the instructions in those messages. If you opt out of promotional messages, we may still send you other messages, like those about specific services we are providing to you and legal notices.
Set Your Browser to Reject Cookies: You can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies before using our website, with the drawback that certain features may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
If you are located in certain countries, including those that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (AKA the “GDPR”), data protection laws give you rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to
- Request access to your personal data;
- Request correction or deletion of your personal data;
- Object to our use and processing of your personal data;
- Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data; and
- Request portability of your personal data.
If you would like to contact us about your personal data please do so at
Vmax Limited
Rutherford House
Warrington Road
Birchwood
Warrington
WA3 6ZH
Other Things You Should Know
Transferring Information
The information about you that we process when you use our services in the EU may be used, stored, and/or accessed by individuals operating outside the European Economic Area (EEA) who work for us as employees, partners or associates, or as third party data processors. This is required for the purposes listed in the How and Why We Use Information section above.
When providing information about you to entities outside the EEA, we will take appropriate measures to ensure that the recipient protects your personal information adequately in accordance with this Privacy Policy as required by applicable law. These measures include:
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In the case of US based entities, entering into European Commission approved standard contractual arrangements with them, or ensuring they have signed up to the EU-US Privacy Shield; or
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In the case of entities based in other countries outside the EEA, entering into European Commission approved standard contractual arrangements with them.
You can ask us for more information about the steps we take to protect your personal information when transferring it from the EU.
Privacy Policy Changes
Although most changes are likely to be minor, VMAX may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. Vmax Consulting encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy.
If we make changes, we will notify you by revising the change log below, and, in some cases, we may provide additional notice (such as adding a statement to our homepage or our blog, or sending you a notification through email). Your further use of our services after a change to our Privacy Policy will be subject to the updated policy.
That’s it! Thanks for reading.
Change Log
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21 May 2018: Security Policy updated and published to reflect the requirements of GDPR
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01 June 2022: Updated with new registered address
13 October 2022: Republished with new website