Privacy Policy

Last Updated: 1st January 2024

Dear reader/ user,

helmig advisory protects the confidentiality and privacy of information entrusted to us. helmig advisory complies with applicable Data Protection Regulations, including the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP). This website is operated by helmig advisory AG, a Swiss company located in the canton of Zürich.

Further privacy information you will find in our Cookie Policy below.

1. Application of privacy policy

This Privacy Policy applies to helmig advisory AG (together "helmig advisory", "we", or "us").

2. Contact for privacy questions or concerns

If you have questions or comments about this Privacy Policy or how helmig advisory handles personal data, please direct your email correspondence to:

helmig advisory AG

Postfach

8810 Horgen

Switzerland

email: dp@helmigadvisory.com

3. Collection of personal data

● Directly: helmig advisory obtains personal data directly from individuals in a variety of ways, including obtaining personal data from individuals who provide us with their business card, complete our online forms, subscribe to our newsletters, register for webinars, attend meetings or events helmig advisory hosts, visit our offices or apply for open positions. helmig advisory may also obtain personal data directly when, for example, establishing a business relationship, performing professional services through a contract, or our hosted software applications.

● Indirectly: helmig advisory obtains personal data indirectly about individuals from various sources, including our clients. helmig advisory may attach personal data to our customer relationship management records to better understand and serve our business clients, prospects, and individuals, satisfy a legal obligation or pursue our legitimate interests.

○ Public sources – Personal data may be obtained from public registers (such as Commercial Registers), news articles, sanctions lists, and Internet searches.

○ Social and professional networking sites – If you register or login to our websites using social media (e.g., LinkedIn, Google, or Twitter) to authenticate your identity and connect your social media login information with us, helmig advisory will collect information or content needed for the registration or login that you permitted your social media provider to share with us. That information may include your name and email address and, depending on your privacy settings, additional details about you, so please review the privacy controls on the applicable service to set how much information you want to be shared with us.

○ Business clients – Our clients may engage us to perform professional services, which involves sharing personal data they control as part of that engagement. For example, helmig advisory will review payroll data as part of an audit, and helmig advisory often needs to use personal data to provide global mobility and pension services. Our services may also include processing personal data under our clients' control on our hosted software applications, which different privacy terms and policies may govern.

○ Recruitment services – helmig advisory may obtain personal data about candidates from an employment agency and other parties, including former employers and credit reference agencies.

4. Collection of personal data types by helmig advisory

helmig advisory may obtain the following categories of personal data about individuals through direct interactions with us or from information provided through client engagements, from applicants, our suppliers and other situations, including those described in this Privacy Policy.

● Personal data. Here is a list of personal data helmig advisory commonly collects to conduct our business activities.

○ Contact details (e.g., name, company name, job title, work and mobile telephone numbers, work and personal email and postal address)

○ Professional details (e.g., job and career history, educational background, professional memberships, published articles).

○ Family and beneficiary details for mobility, official approvals and permits, insurance and pension planning services (e.g., names and dates of birth).

○ Financial information about our business dealings.

○ Video monitoring systems at our sites may collect images of visitors. helmig advisory automatically overwrites such video monitoring footage within 60 days.

● Sensitive personal data. When helmig advisory needs to process sensitive personal data, it is with the individual's consent unless it is obtained indirectly for legitimate purposes. Examples of sensitive personal data helmig advisory may obtain include:

○ Personal identification documents may reveal race or ethnic origin, religious beliefs or physical health, and possibly biometric data of private individuals, beneficial owners of corporate entities, or applicants.

○ Expense receipts submitted for individual tax or accounting advice that reveal affiliations with trade unions or political opinions.

○ Adverse information about potential or existing clients and applicants that may reveal criminal convictions or offences information.

○ Information provided to us by our clients during a professional engagement.

○ Dietary restrictions when registering for events that reveal religious beliefs or physical health.

● Children data. Although our sites and services are not intentionally designed for or directed at children, helmig advisory may occasionally receive details about children, e.g. as part of an engagement to provide advisory services

● Location-based data. helmig advisory may process geographical locations, e.g. when you are using our website to locate an office near you.

5. Lawful reasons for helmig advisory to process personal data

helmig advisory may rely on the following lawful reasons when helmig advisory collects and use personal data to operate our business and provide our products and services:

● Contract – helmig advisory may process personal data to perform our contractual obligations.

● Consent – helmig advisory may rely on your consent when you provide your data to us.

● Legitimate interests – helmig advisory may rely on legitimate interests based on our evaluation that the processing is fair, reasonable, and balanced. These include:

○ Delivering services and products – To deliver the services and products our clients have engaged us to provide.

○ Marketing – To deliver timely industry insights and professional knowledge, offerings, and invitations helmig advisory believe are welcomed by our business clients, prospects, subscribers and others.

○ Recruitment – To seek qualified candidates.

● Legal obligations and public interest – helmig advisory may process personal data to meet regulatory and public interest obligations or mandates.

6. Operational reasons for helmig advisory to use personal data

● Providing professional advice and delivering reports and services.

● Promoting our professional services and capabilities to existing and prospective business clients.

● Sending invitations and providing access to guests attending our events and webinars.

● Personalising online landing pages and communications helmig advisory thinks would be of interest based on interactions with us.

● Administering, maintaining, developing, and ensuring the security and functionality of our information systems, applications, and websites.

● Authenticating registered users to certain areas of our sites if applicable.

● Processing online requests, including responding to communications from individuals or requests for proposals and quotations.

● Contacting journalists regarding market insights, corporate news, invitations to press conferences, and highlighting messages that may be of interest on specific industry topics.

● Travel arrangement assistance.

● Complying with legal and regulatory obligations.

● Preventing fraud or criminal activity, safeguarding our IT systems and handling claims.

● Employment of personnel and work processes.

● Seeking qualified candidates.

In some situations, the provision of personal data is required to provide the services in such cases, this is indicated on the website accordingly or pointed out in the disclaimers or contractual agreements. Furthermore, helmig advisory may be required to collect specific personal data by law. If you fail to provide such data, helmig advisory may not be able to provide the services, or helmig advisory may have to cancel a service you have with us.

7. Sharing of personal data with third parties

helmig advisory may share personal data with trusted third parties to help us deliver efficient, quality services and products. These recipients are contractually bound to safeguard the data helmig advisory entrusts them. helmig advisory may engage with several or all the following categories of recipients:

● Member firms of the helmig advisory network, where necessary, for administrative purposes (e.g., hosting and supporting IT applications, performing client conflict checks, HR support functions) and to provide professional services to our clients (e.g., when providing services involving advice from helmig advisory in different territories).

● Parties that support us as helmig advisory provides our services and products (e.g. providers of telecommunication systems, mailroom support, IT system support, archiving services, document production services, cloud-based software services, scanning services).

● Our professional advisers include lawyers, auditors, and insurers.

● A potential buyer, transferee, merger partner or seller and their advisers in connection with an actual or potential transfer or merger/acquisition of part or all our business or assets or any associated rights or interests.

● Payment services providers.

● Marketing services providers.

● Law enforcement or other government and regulatory agencies or to other third parties as required by, and following, applicable law or regulation.

● Recruitment services providers.

8. Transferring personal data outside Switzerland

helmig advisory stores personal data on servers in Switzerland and sometimes in the cloud service google drive. helmig advisory may transfer personal data to reputable third-party organisations inside or outside Switzerland when helmig advisory has a business reason to engage these organisations. Each organisation must safeguard personal data following our contractual obligations and applicable data protection legislation. Such safeguards may include transfer to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection according to lists of countries published by the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner; applying standard data protection model clauses, binding corporate rules or other standard contractual obligations which provide for appropriate protection of data.

9. The use of cookies and the automatic collection of personal data

In some instances, helmig advisory AG and its service providers use cookies, web beacons and other technologies to automatically collect certain types of information when you visit us online, as well as through emails that helmig advisory may exchange. Collecting this information allows us to customise your online experience, improve the performance, usability, and effectiveness of helmig advisory's online presence, and measure the effectiveness of our marketing activities. Where cookies are used, a statement will be sent to your browser explaining the use of cookies. To learn more, please refer to our cookie policy below.

10. Data protection rights

If helmig advisory processes personal information about you, you have the rights listed below. Before responding to your request, helmig advisory may ask for proof of identity. This helps us ensure that personal data is not disclosed to anyone with no right to receive it. helmig advisory may also ask you for sufficient information about your interactions with us so that helmig advisory can locate your personal information.

● Access – You can ask us to verify whether helmig advisory is processing personal data about you and if so, to provide more specific information.

● Correction – You can ask us to correct our records if you believe they contain incorrect or incomplete information about you.

● Erasure – You can ask us to erase (delete) your data after you withdraw your consent to processing or when helmig advisory no longer needs it for the purpose it was initially collected, and no retention requirements exist

● Processing restrictions – You can ask us to temporarily restrict our processing of your data if you contest the accuracy of your data and prefer to limit its use rather than having us erase it.

● Data portability – In some circumstances where you have provided personal data, you can ask us to transmit that personal data in electronic form if technically feasible.

● Automated Individual Decision-making – You can ask us to review any decisions made about you which helmig advisory made solely based on automated processing, including profiling, that produced legal effects concerning you or significantly affected you.

● Right to Object to Marketing, including Profiling – You can object to our use of your personal data for marketing purposes. helmig advisory may need to keep some minimal information to comply with your request to cease marketing.

● Right to Object to Active Sourcing – You can object to our use of your personal data for active sourcing purposes. helmig advisory may need to keep some minimal information to comply with your request to cease recruiting activities

● Right to Withdraw Consent – You can withdraw the consent that you have previously given to one or more specified purposes of processing your personal data. This will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. However, it may mean helmig advisory cannot provide certain products or services to you, and helmig advisory will advise you if this is the case.

To submit a data request, please direct your correspondence to:

helmig advisory AG

Data Privacy

Postfach

8810 Horgen

Switzerland

email: dp@helmigadvisory.ch

Commercial registry number: CHE-362.414.412

helmig advisory aims to respond within 30 days from the date helmig advisory receive privacy-related communications.

No fee is required to request unless your request is unfounded or excessive. Depending on the circumstances, helmig advisory may not comply with your request based on other lawful grounds.

11. Personal data security

helmig advisory has put appropriate technical and organisational security policies and procedures in place to protect personal data (including sensitive personal data) from loss, misuse, alteration, or destruction. helmig advisory limits access to personal data in general. Those individuals who have access to the data are required to maintain the confidentiality of such information. helmig advisory may apply pseudonymisation, de-identification and anonymisation techniques in efforts to further protect personal data.

If you have access to parts of our websites or use our services, you remain responsible for keeping your user ID and password confidential. In addition, please be aware that the transmission of data via the internet is not completely secure. While helmig advisory does its best to protect your personal data's security, helmig advisory cannot ensure or guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk.

12. Retention of personal data

helmig advisory retains personal data to provide our services, make offerings, stay in contact with you and comply with applicable laws, regulations and professional obligations that helmig advisory is subject to. helmig advisory retains personal data for so long as it is needed for the purposes for which it was collected or in line with legal and regulatory requirements or contractual arrangements. helmig advisory will dispose of personal data when helmig advisory no longer needs it.

13. Links to other websites

Our websites might contain links to other sites, including sites maintained by current or future helmig advisory network firms that are not governed by this Privacy Policy. Please review the destination websites' privacy policies before submitting personal data on those sites. While helmig advisory tries to link only to sites that share our high standards and respect for privacy, helmig advisory is not responsible for other sites' content, security, or privacy practices.

14. Change this privacy policy

helmig advisory regularly reviews this Privacy Policy and will post any updates to it on this webpage. This Privacy Policy was last updated on 3rd January 2024.

Cookie Policy

1. Automatic collection of personal information

In some instances, helmig advisory and its service providers use cookies, web beacons and other technologies to automatically collect certain types of information when you visit us online, as well as through emails that helmig advisory may exchange. Collecting this information allows us to customise your online experience, improve the performance, usability, and effectiveness of helmig advisory's online presence, and measure the effectiveness of our marketing activities.

1.1 IP addresses

An IP address is a number assigned to your computer whenever you access the internet. It allows computers and servers to recognise and communicate with one another. IP addresses from which visitors appear to originate may be recorded for IT security and system diagnostic purposes. This information may also be used in aggregate form to conduct website trends and performance analysis.

1.2 Cookies

Cookies may be placed on your computer or internet-enabled device whenever you visit us online. This allows the site to remember your computer or device and serves several purposes.

A notification banner on some of our websites will appear, requiring your consent to collect cookies. If you do not consent, your computer or internet-enabled device will not be tracked for marketing-related activities. A secondary type of cookie called "user input" may still be required for necessary functionality. Such cookies will not be blocked using this notification banner. Your selection will be saved in a cookie and is valid for 90 days. You may clear your browser's cookies if you wish to revoke your preference.

Although most browsers automatically accept cookies, you can choose whether to accept cookies via your browser's settings (often found in your browser's Tools or Preferences menu). You may also delete cookies from your device at any time. However, please be aware that if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to experience some of our websites' features fully.

Further information about managing cookies can be found in your browser's help file or through sites such as www.allaboutcookies.org.

Other third-party tools and widgets may be used on our web pages to provide additional functionality. These tools or widgets may place a cookie on your device to make their service easier to use and ensure your interaction is displayed on our web pages correctly.

Cookies by themselves do not tell us your email address or otherwise identify you personally. In our analytical reports, helmig advisory may obtain other identifiers, including IP addresses, but this is to determine the number of unique visitors to our websites and the geographic origin of visitor trends, and not to identify individual visitors.

BY NAVIGATING TO OUR WEBSITES OR ENTERING YOUR LOGIN DETAILS TO ACCESS AREAS RESERVED FOR REGISTERED USERS, YOU AGREE THAT WE CAN PLACE THESE COOKIES ON YOUR COMPUTER OR INTERNET-ENABLED DEVICE.

1.3 Analytics

helmig advisory uses Squarespace and google analytics. More information about how these analytics can be used by helmig advisory can be found here and here.

To provide website visitors with more choices on how Google Analytics collects their data, Google has developed the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. The add-on communicates with Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js) to indicate that information about the website visit should not be sent to Google Analytics. The Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on does not prevent information from being sent to the website itself or to other web analytics services.

1.4 Retargeting

helmig advisory uses retargeting technologies. For this purpose, cookies or similar technologies are operated by third parties to record which of our websites have been visited with your browser. This enables us to make your experience on our website more interesting, and you can be recognised on other websites and reminded of us using advertisements.

helmig advisory uses similar tools from LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. As mentioned above, you can also disable the storage of cookies by changing the settings of your browser.

1.5 Web beacons

A web beacon is a small image file on a web page that can be used to collect certain information from your computers, such as an IP address, the time the content was viewed, a browser type, and the existence of cookies previously set by the same server. helmig advisory only uses web beacons following applicable laws.

helmig advisory or its service providers may use web beacons to track the effectiveness of third-party websites that provide us with recruiting or marketing services or to gather aggregate visitor statistics and manage cookies.

You can render some web beacons unusable by rejecting their associated cookies. The web beacon may still record an anonymous visit from your IP address, but cookie information will not be recorded.

In some newsletters and other communications, helmig advisory may monitor recipient actions, such as open email rates through embedded links within the messages. helmig advisory collects this information to gauge user interest and to enhance future user experiences.

1.6 Location-based tools

helmig advisory may collect and use the geographical location of your computer or mobile device. This location data is collected to provide you with information regarding services which helmig advisory believes may be of interest to you based on your geographic location and to improve our location-based products and services.

2. Social media widgets and applications

helmig advisory websites may include functionality to enable sharing via third-party social media applications, such as the Twitter widget. These social media applications may collect and use information regarding your use of helmig advisory websites (see details on 'Social Sharing' cookies above). Any personal information that you provide via such social media applications may be collected and used by other members of that social media application, and such interactions are governed by the privacy policies of the companies that provide the application. helmig advisory does not have control over, or responsibility for, those companies or their use of your information.

In addition, helmig advisory websites may host blogs, forums, crowd-sourcing and other applications, or services (collectively "social media features"). The purpose of social media features is to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and content. Therefore, any personal information you provide on any helmig advisory social media feature may be shared with other users of that social media feature (unless otherwise stated at the point of collection), over whom helmig advisory may have limited or no control.

3. Policy updates and changes

helmig advisory regularly reviews this Privacy Policy and will post any updates to it on this webpage. This Cookie Policy was last updated on 3rd January 2024.