BlakYaks Policies & Statements

About BlakYaks

BlakYaks is a young company formed in 2020 and focused on cloud and container automation solutions. We are an energetic UK based organisation head quartered in London. We accelerate our customers transition to cloud and container platforms to accelerate their businesses and enable them to compete in an increasingly online and digital market place.

Inclusion and Diversity

At BlakYaks we will treat everyone equitably and we are committed to eradicate any form of discrimination at any level within our organisation. A diverse team enriches our business and the services we provide to our customers. We believe in and are committed to building teams that are diverse in thought, background and culture. We recognise the rights of everyone around us, in and out the business and treat others with (and expect to be treated with) mutual respect and we accept others without bias. Our organisation is committed in its efforts to build respect, fairness, equality and to promote the well being and good self esteem of all our team members. We embrace people and views that span cultures, races, backgrounds and genders. We want to create an environment that is inclusive for all whilst recognising the individual challenges of life to allow everyone in the organisation to thrive.

BlakYaks Core Values

At BlakYaks we hold ourselves to account in demonstrating the following core values.

  • We put our customers goals first.

  • We will develop our team members to become the best they can be professionally and to behave ethically and with integrity at all times.

  • We aim for high quality in everything we do and every interaction we have.

  • We treat everyone in the business and everyone we interact with respectfully.

Modern Slavery Act 2015

This statement has been published in accordance with the Modern Slavery Act.

The International Labour Organisation estimated that by 2016, there were 40 million people in modern slavery and 152 million in child labour around the world. BlakYaks Limited will take all possible and practical steps to combat and prevent slavery and human trafficking within any line of the business of the company.

Slavery and Human Trafficking

While BlakYaks are a small business with a relatively small supply chain, we aim to behave and act with integrity and ethically in all our business dealings and we will remain committed to ensuring that no modern slavery or human trafficking is taking place in our supply chains. As a business we aim to respect and protect the human rights of anyone we have business dealings with including those within the BlakYaks business including our staff, job candidates, customers and any associated suppliers, and hold ourselves accountable and responsible to act morally across our whole business. The attitude is underpinned by strong foundational core values and embedded in a culture supported by our leaders.

Its important to us that our employees and anyone representing BlakYaks maintains high standards and adheres to our values and policies and that helps ensure we stay compliant with the laws (including the Modern Slavery Act).

Risk Assessment for Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking

As the company matures and grows in size we will look to continuously develop and improve internal systems and processes to:

  • Identify and assess potential risk areas in our supply chains and mitigate the risk of slavery and human trafficking occurring in our supply chains.

  • Monitor potential risk areas in our supply chains and act accordingly if we perceive risks.

  • Ensure that our own staff or our suppliers staff are welcome to come forward and report any concerns that they become aware of.

This statement is made pursuant to section 54(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and constitutes BlakYaks slavery and human trafficking statement for the financial year ending 31 December 2021.

Health and Safety Policy

This Policy is issued in accordance with the Company’s obligation under Section 2(3) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 to prepare a written policy statement; and the Company’s obligation under Regulation 5(2) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 to record arrangements for the effective planning, organisation, control monitoring and review of health and safety preventative and protective measures. 

The Company recognises that it has a legal duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety, and well-being of staff while they are at work.  This includes providing safe plant and systems; safe methods of handling and transport of goods; information, instruction and training to employees; a safe place of work and a safe environment.  The Company should also consult with staff, provide information and training, and operate procedures for dealing with emergencies including fire where appropriate.

So far as is reasonably practicable we aim to achieve the following:

  • Safe equipment and systems

  • Safe methods of handling, storage and transport of articles or goods

  • Provide employees with information, instruction and training

  • Ensure the place of work is safe, with means of access and egress

  • A no smoking policy other than in designated areas

  • Premises and equipment kept clean and in good repair

  • All workplaces comply with legal requirements as to access, space to work, temperature, ventilation, noise control and safety from hazardous substances

  • Compliance with all Health and Safety legislation and Regulations

The measures the Company takes to maintain its health and safety responsibility are implemented through management and all employees who, of course, also have duties under health and safety law.

The Company requires the full co-operation and participation of all employees and employees are obliged to take reasonable care for their own safety and for that of others who may be affected by their acts or omissions and to co-operate fully with us in the arrangements made in relation to Health and Safety matters. 

Any breach or non-observance of the Health and Safety policy constitutes a disciplinary offence in respect of which an employee may in an appropriate case be dismissed.

For example, all employees must:

  • Report any faults or defects in machinery or equipment immediately

  • Report any safety concerns at all immediately

  • Notify us of their pregnancy or any illness or medical condition (including the taking of prescribed medication) that may be relevant to their health, safety and welfare

Employees have a responsibility to report any potential Health or Safety hazard including infectious or other diseases, accidents or injuries associated with the workplace.  Examples are as follows:

  • Fire risks, e.g. accumulation of combustible waste, blocking or obstruction of fire doors, corridors, or smoking in non-smoking areas

  • Electrical problems, e.g. worn cables, loose connections, multiple connectors to power sockets, faulty wiring or trailing cables

  • Defective equipment

  • Defective flooring e.g. worn or frayed carpets, uneven or slippery surfaces

  • Unsuitable loading or stacking

  • Broken glass or spillages

  • Carelessness by an employee or other person on the premises, e.g. attempting to repair equipment without proper training

  • Taking of prescribed or other medicine that may affect them when driving or operating machinery or impair concentration or alertness

Only those qualified to do so and employed for that purpose may carry out repairs or maintenance to machinery or equipment. 

All accidents and near misses irrespective of triviality must be reported to your manager who will ensure that any necessary preventative measures are introduced.  All accidents must be recorded in the accident book.

We have a procedure for evacuation and dealing with fires or other emergencies, details of which are displayed throughout the buildings where people work.

Employees and other workers are encouraged to suggest improvements to the Health and Safety policy and suggestions should be made to your manager.

BlakYaks Privacy Policy

Introduction

This Privacy Policy will help you understand what information we collect from you and process using this website and what choices and rights you have about your personal data.

Data Protection Framework

BlakYaks Limited is based within the UK, and as such we have aligned our Privacy Policy with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which came into effect on 25th May 2018, under the supervision of the ICO within the UK.

Our code principles with regards to data privacy and human rights

User privacy and data protection are human rights.

Personal data is a liability, it should only be collected, processed and stored when absolutely necessary, and should be protected with adequate security measures.

We will never sell, rent or otherwise distribute or make public your personal information.

Legislation acknowledgements

Our business and business systems (including this website) are designed to comply with the following national and international legislation with regards to data protection and user privacy:

UK Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA)

EU Data Protection Directive 2016/680 (DPD)

EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR)

Customer and employee candidate data

You may decide to send us your personal information via this website if you are seeking more information, or registering for podcasts or events or webcasts we put out from time to time or for other similar purposes. Your decision to disclose your personal data is entirely voluntary, and by doing so, you are providing us with specific consent to use your personal data only for the purposes for which you have disclosed it to us.

BlakYaks may access and use your Customer Data only for the purposes for which you have submitted it to us to (a) provide information to you, (b) make contact with you, (c) provide services to you, or (d) maintain the operations and security of the website and services we provide to you. We will not use your personal information for any other purposes, for example the communication of marketing material, unless we have your consent to do so.

We will at all times handle and store your personal data in accordance with industry best practice. This includes the activities and procedures undertaken by our own personnel and authorised third parties, and any controls which we have implemented to prevent unauthorised access, compromise or theft of information from our applications, supporting computer systems and premises.

Sensitive personal data

GDPR specifies a set of personal data categories which are considered to be “sensitive”, and which require special consideration by Data Controllers. This website and any services available from this website, and also any supporting Data Privacy Impact Assessments do not knowingly collect or process any sensitive personal data.

Customer and citizen data rights

Your rights on the information we hold about you

You have certain rights in relation to personal information we hold about you. Details of these rights and how to exercise them are set out in the link below:

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/right-of-access/

We will require evidence of your identity before we are able to act on your request.

These right exists only in respect of personal information that:

- you have provided to us previously; and

- is processed by us using automated means.

Whilst we are happy for such requests to be made, we are not able to guarantee technical compatibility with a third parties systems. We are also unable to comply with requests that relate to personal information of others without their consent.

You can exercise any of the above rights by contacting us using any of the methods in the Contact section below.

Consent

To the extent that we are processing your personal information based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. You can do this by using the contact information provided at the end of this page.

Most of the above rights are subject to limitations and exceptions. We will provide reasons if we are unable to comply with any request for the exercise of your rights.

If you are unhappy about our use of your personal information, you can contact us using the details provided at the bottom of this page. You are also entitled to lodge a complaint with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office using any of the below contact methods:

Telephone: 0303 123 1111

Website: https://ico.org.uk/concerns/

Post: Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

You may prefer to, and are entitled to, lodge a complaint with a different supervisory authority in a country of your choice. A list of European Supervisory Authorities is available here: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/da...

Data breaches

We will report any relevant data breach any of our third party data processors, data subjects and relevant authorities within 96 hours of becoming aware of the breach, where feasible.

Data controller

The Data Controller of the data gathered through this website is:

BlakYaks Limited, a UK Private limited Company with company number: 13017209

Whose registered office is: 64 Great Eastern Street, London, EC2A 3QR.

And whose operating office is: 64 Great Eastern Street, London, EC2A 3QR.

Personal information collected via this web site and why its collected

This website collects and uses personal information for the following reasons as listed in the sub-sections below.

We will retain data for the following periods, based on these source types:

- Record sourced with consent: For lifetime of company

- Contact previously sourced with legitimate interest: 3yr since last activity

- Passively sourced record: 1 month or convert to consent

Tracking of visits to this web site

Google Analytics

This site uses Google Analytics (GA) to track user interaction. We use this data to determine the number of people using our site, to better understand how they find and use our web pages and to see their journey through the website.

Although GA records data such as your geographical location, device, internet browser and operating system, none of this information personally identifies you to us. GA also records your computer’s IP address which could be used to personally identify you but Google do not grant us access to this. We consider Google to be a third party data processor (see section 11 below).

GA makes use of cookies, details of which can be found on Google’s developer guides. FYI our website uses the analytics.js implementation of GA.

Disabling cookies on your internet browser will stop GA from tracking any part of your visit to pages within this website.

Contact forms and email links

Should you choose to contact us using the contact form on our Contact Us page, the data that you supply will be forwarded to Capsule CRM. Capsule CRM is used to store customer information and is considered a 3rd party data processor. The contact details you submit will not be stored on the BlakYaks website database.

Should you choose to contact us via email, the data you supply will be processed in Microsoft Office 365 and Sharepoint.

Email newsletter

If you choose to join our email newsletter, the email address that you submit to us will be forwarded to Mailchimp and Capsule CRM. Both provide us with marketing information and are considered 3rd party data processors. The email address that you submit will not be stored within the BlakYaks websites own database.

You can subscribe to the email newsletter through an online automated process should you wish to do so but you do so at your own discretion. Some subscriptions may be manually processed through prior written agreement with the user. Subscriptions are taken in compliance with UK Spam Laws detailed in the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003.

Email marketing campaigns published by this website or its owners may contain tracking facilities within the actual email content. Subscriber activity is tracked and stored in Capsule CRM and Mailchimp for evaluation. Such tracked activity may include; the opening of emails, forwarding of emails, the clicking of links within the email content, times, dates and frequency of activity [this is by no means an exhaustive list]. This information is used to refine future email campaigns and supply the user with more relevant content based around their activity.

Your email address will remain within CapsuleCRM and Mailchimp for up to 3 years from the date of your consent, or for as long as we continue to use CapsuleCRM and Mailchimps services for email marketing or until you specifically request removal from the list. In compliance with UK Spam Laws and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, subscribers can do this by unsubscribing using the unsubscribe links contained in any email newsletters that we send you or by requesting removal via email. When requesting removal via email, please send your email to us using the email account that is subscribed to the mailing list.

If you are under 16 years of age you MUST obtain parental consent before joining our email newsletter.

While your email address remains within the CapsuleCRM and Mailchimp's databases, you may receive periodic newsletters from us.

Should you decide to opt out of any further communication, you have the option to delete your profile data from our system entirely at any time.

Resources & Further Information:

EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016 (GDPR)

Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003

Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 – The Guide

About this web site’s server

This website is hosted by Squarespace. We consider Squarespace to be a third party data processor. All traffic (transferral of files) between this website and your browser is encrypted and delivered over HTTPS.

Our declaration of 3rd party data sub-processors

We use a number of third parties to process personal data on our behalf. These third parties have been carefully chosen and all of them comply with the legislation set out in this notice.

  • The activities within which each of these Data Processors participates have been recorded within the applicable Privacy Impact Assessments (also known as Data Protection Impact Assessments under GDPR).

Cookie Policy

This website uses cookies to better the users experience while visiting the website. Where applicable this website uses a cookie control system allowing the user on their first visit to the website to allow or disallow the use of cookies on their computer / device. This complies with recent legislation requirements for websites to obtain explicit consent from users before leaving behind or reading files such as cookies on a user’s computer / device.

We use both session-based and persistent cookies, dependent upon how you use or interact with our website. Cookies are small files saved to the user’s computer or mobile device that track, save and store information about the user’s interactions and usage of the website. This allows the website, through its server to provide the users with a tailored experience within this website. Session-based cookies last only while your browser is open and are automatically deleted when you close your browser. Persistent cookies last until you or your browser deletes them, or until they expire.

---------------------------------------------------------

Google Analytics - The cookies in use to deliver Google Analytics service are described here:

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/cookie-usage

---------------------------------------------------------

CapsuleCRM - The cookies in use to deliver CapsuleCRM are described here:

https://capsulecrm.com/privacy/cookie/

---------------------------------------------------------

SquareSpace - The cookies in use to deliver our website hosted on SquareSpace are described here:

https://www.squarespace.com/cookie-policy

---------------------------------------------------------

Google Analytics Opt-out

In order to provide website visitors with more choice on how data is collected by Google Analytics, Google has developed the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. The add-on communicates with the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js) to stop data being sent to Google Analytics. The Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on does not affect usage of the website in any other way. A link to further information on the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on is provided below for your convenience.

http://tools.google.com/dlpage...

For more information on the usage of cookies by Google Analytics please see the Google website. A link to the privacy advice for this product is provided below for your convenience.

http://www.google.com/analytic...

Disabling Cookies

If you would like to restrict the use of cookies you can control this in your Internet browser. Links to advice on how to do this for the most popular Internet browsers are provided below for convenience and will be available for the Internet browser of your choice either online or via the software help (normally available via key F1).

Chrome

Internet Explorer

Firefox

Safari

External Links

Although this website only looks to include quality, safe and relevant external links, users are advised to adopt a policy of caution before clicking any external web links mentioned throughout this website. (External links are clickable text / banner / image links to other websites, similar to; google.com or facebook.com.)

The owners of this website cannot guarantee or verify the contents of any externally linked website despite their best efforts. Users should therefore note they click on external links at their own risk and this website and its owners cannot be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any external links mentioned.

Adverts & Sponsored Links

This website may contain sponsored links and adverts. These will typically be served through our advertising partners, to whom may have detailed privacy policies relating directly to the adverts they serve. Clicking on any such adverts will send you to the advertisers website through a referral program which may use cookies and will track the number of referrals sent from this website. This may include the use of cookies which may in turn be saved on your computers hard drive. Users should therefore note they click on sponsored external links at their own risk and this website and its owners cannot be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any external links mentioned.

Social Media

Communication, engagement and actions taken through external social media platforms that this website and its owners participate on are custom to the terms and conditions as well as the privacy policies held with each social media platform respectively.

Users are advised to use social media platforms wisely and communicate / engage upon them with due care and caution in regard to their own privacy and personal details. This website nor its owners will ever ask for personal or sensitive information through social media platforms and encourage users wishing to discuss sensitive details to contact them through primary communication channels such as by telephone or email.

This website may use social sharing buttons from LinkedIn, YouTube and and Twitter which help share web content directly from web pages to the social media platform in question. Users are advised before using such social sharing buttons that they do so at their own discretion and note that the social media platform may track and save your request to share a web page respectively through your social media platform account. We consider LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter to be third party data processors.

Contacting BlakYaks

We are committed to providing you with full transparency with regard to your information rights. If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, or if you would like to exercise any of your statutory rights please write to

BlakYaks Leadership, 64 Great Eastern Street, London EC2A 3QR, or email privacy@blakyaks.com.

Please note, all electronic correspondence, including emails, are subject to the terms of this privacy notice.

Changes to our policies

Our policies may change from time to time in line with legislation or industry changes. We will not explicitly inform our clients or website users of these changes. Instead, we recommend that you check this page occasionally for any policy changes.

Dirk Anderson, CEO (Released: 1st March 2021)

Contact us.

solutions@blakyaks.com
020 4551 9237

64 Great Eastern Street, London, England, EC2A 3QR.