No, but you will need to sign up if you want to get references from the system or add any employees to the system.

The first step is to sign your company up for an account. This is carefully administered process as we must ensure that only legitimate employers are added to the system as opposed to people claiming companies records and then creating false references for employees.

The bare minimum is date of employment, job title is optional as is any additional information, please note that you should be careful in leaving anything other than factual information in the reference, so measured sick days would be allowed but your opinion on their work attire should be avoided.

No, once you add an employee’s information to the system, any references that are received for that employee should be pointed to the WorkRef system.

Don’t add them but make it clear that you are only able to supply references through the WorkRef system and as a result they will not have any reference requests answered.

Normally you cannot add data to the system for employees who do not work for you, however for the first 30 days that you have access to the system you will be able to load previous employee’s data into the system.

Sign up to the system, await for your authorisation and then you will be sent a link to your dashboard so that you can login. in the menu you’ll see an add employee button, clicking this will allow you to add a single employee or use a batch upload spreadsheet process.

No – The only people who can see your current employees data are you and the employee, the system does not allow and will never visible to any third parties.

We have a dispute manager facility on the system, generally disputes are over job title and dates, remember to keep information factual. Ultimately your reference providing it is factual will not change. The dispute manager process is to correct minor administrative errors.

The only people who have access to they system are approved users in your organisation and the employee, WorkRef have admin access to the system for the purpose of maintenance and data recovery.

You can add contractors to the system, but they should be clearly marked as ‘contractor’ when adding them, most employers choose not to add them. Marking them as contractor allows them to appear on two employers lists at the same time.

It is essential that only genuine companies have access to the system, not because they view employee’s data but because they can create records for individuals, and we need to ensure only the correct individuals within each organisation are able to add employees and create references. As a result, we have a robust onboarding process.

Immediately contact us via email here with your details and we will be in touch to resolve, please note that the WorkRef record for your organisation will be immediately locked until the verification process has been followed.

It completely free to join WorkRef, we make a small charge to the organisation requesting a reference to pay for the service.

Yes - it is actually probably more GDPR compliant than your current reference requesting process.  An employee is contacted by email to accept or decline a reference request each time one is requested. The data stored is detail of the employment contract, not detail of that employee.

Your data can only be accessed by you and your current employer. If you apply for a new position with another organisation, they will request to see your references through the system, you can either allow those organisations who you have applied for a job with to have access automatically or you can set your account so that you must approve any access. Access to your information is heavily protected

Yes, you can set your account so that you have to authorise any registered user form seeing your data.

We require that all information held on the system is factual, dates of employment etc. Any personal statements or letters of recommendations supplied by previous employers should be checked carefully if you are still unhappy then you can use our dispute manager process to high light this to the record creator.

Yes, there is an extensive preferences section where you can configure what is displayed to any potential or current employers.

In your dashboard you will see a request reference button, this will allow a previous employer to add data to your record, they cannot do this without your approval and request.

Use the dispute manager to bring this to the attention of the organisation responsible, i.e. your previous employer.

Your data is completely secure, WorkRef utilises the latest SSL technology to encrypt and protect your data.

No, your current employer cannot see who else has access your record, only you can see this data.

No. The system is completely free for employees, we are funded by companies who request references, which we make a small charge for.

There is no legal obligation for an employer to sign up to the WorkRef system, we rely on employees requesting this and advise that you to keep asking. Building your recommendations and references should be as important to you as your credit score is when applying for a loan, the more people that use they system the better for everyone.

It's not actually your data we are storing. We are storing details of your employment contract by NI number and surname only.  Currently your data is given out by companies whenever a reference request is made; this way, you have total control on who sees what.