Privacy

Last updated: 26 June 2026

Who we are

ESSENCE is operated by Employ Studio Group Ltd (company number 15865351), registered in England and Wales. For the purposes of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, Employ Studio Group Ltd is the data controller for personal data collected through the ESSENCE product.

What this covers

This policy covers the ESSENCE assessment and results product: the questions you answer, the results we generate for you, and the limited usage analytics we collect to keep the product working. It is separate from the privacy notice on our marketing site at essenceid.com, which covers enquiry and contact-form data only.

What we collect

When you take the assessment we collect the answers you give and the structured results derived from them. We do not ask for, and the assessment does not require, your name or contact details to produce your results. We do not collect raw scores, rankings, or any employer-facing judgement. ESSENCE reflects operating patterns, not a verdict, and your results are private to you and never shared with employers.

We use product analytics (PostHog) to understand how the product is used (for example, which sections are viewed and where people drop off), so we can improve it. These analytics events are sanitised at the point they are sent: they never include your free-text answers, your results narrative, raw scores, or other personal content.

Cookies and analytics

ESSENCE uses only the strictly necessary cookies needed to run the product, for example to keep your session active and make the site function securely. These essential cookies are not used for advertising or profiling. Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), strictly necessary cookies do not require your consent, so we do not show a cookie-consent banner.

Our product analytics (PostHog) are configured to run without storing analytics cookies or other identifiers in your browser (memory-only persistence), so no consent banner is required for analytics either. We do not use advertising cookies or third-party tracking pixels, and we do not allow analytics providers to track you across other websites. If we ever change this configuration in a way that stores non-essential cookies, we will introduce a consent mechanism and update this policy first.

How long we keep it

In line with the data-minimisation and storage-limitation principles of UK GDPR (Article 5(1)(e)), we keep your assessment answers and results in identifiable form only for as long as we need them (so you can revisit your past report and repeat or compare assessments) and for no longer than up to 24 months from your last activity, after which they are deleted or irreversibly anonymised. You can ask us to delete your assessment data sooner at any time, and this retention period does not limit your right to erasure.

Storage, security and backups

Your data is stored on reputable cloud infrastructure (our database and application are hosted on managed cloud providers) with encrypted transport and least-privilege access.

We use automated backup mechanisms to create regular copies of production data, which are held in separate, access-controlled cloud storage so your data can be recovered in the event of a failure or incident. Backups are kept only for a limited period before being rotated out. This supports the integrity, availability and resilience of our processing required under Article 32 of UK GDPR.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to access the personal data we hold about you, to have it corrected, to have it erased, to restrict or object to processing, and to data portability. To exercise any of these rights, contact us at the address below. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.

Contact

For any privacy or data-protection question, or to exercise your rights, contact us at hello@essenceid.com. General enquiries can be sent to the same address.

Changes to this policy

This is a pre-launch product privacy notice. It will be reviewed by UK counsel and expanded before the first paid pilot to cover in-product data handling in full. We will update the “Last updated” date whenever the policy materially changes.