Privacy Policy

Who we are

Cairn is an employee engagement and retention survey platform operated by CAIRNHR, a limited liability company based in Park City, Utah, United States. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, and what we do with it.

We provide Cairn to employers and to HR consultants acting on an employer's behalf. If you are an employee who received a survey invitation, your employer decides what information about you is entered into Cairn, and we handle it on their instructions.

Information we collect

Information your employer provides. To send you a survey, an employer or their consultant enters a roster into Cairn. That typically includes your name, work email address, and — where the employer has chosen to send surveys by text — your mobile telephone number. It may also include your job title, department, work location, region, and start date.

Survey responses. Your answers and any comments you write. Responses are collected anonymously: we do not store a link between a response and the person who submitted it. A personal survey link is used only to attach coarse grouping information, such as your department or location, so results can be summarised by team.

Messaging records. If you are sent a survey by text message, we record that a message was sent and whether you have asked us to stop sending them.

Account information. For employers and consultants who sign in to Cairn: name, email address, and the organisation they belong to.

How we use it

• To deliver survey invitations by email or text message.
• To produce summary reports for your employer. Results are reported only in aggregate, and a group must contain at least five responses before it is reported separately, so individuals cannot be identified from a breakdown.
• To analyse written comments and produce themes, summaries, scores, reports, and recommendations for your employer. This uses automated and AI-assisted analysis, including third-party AI services operating under contract and prohibited from using the content to train their own models.
• To build aggregated and de-identified datasets, and to use them for AI and analytical purposes — improving our models and analysis, developing and training features, producing benchmarks, and researching workplace engagement and retention trends. Aggregated data contains no names, no contact details, and nothing that identifies you or your employer, and it cannot be reversed to recover them.
• To operate, secure, support, and improve the platform.
• To comply with legal obligations, including messaging regulations.

AI and aggregated data

We use AI across Cairn: to read written comments, surface themes, score engagement and retention signals, draft summaries and reports, and suggest actions. We also use information held in Cairn, in aggregated and de-identified form, to improve that analysis, to develop and train features, and to understand workplace engagement and retention trends.

Benchmarks that compare one employer against others are produced only for organisations whose employer or consultant has asked to take part, and they use aggregate scores only — never the words anyone wrote. Your employer can always benchmark its own teams against each other; that is ordinary reporting and needs no one's separate agreement.

We will never disclose your personal information as part of this. Aggregate and AI uses are carried out on data stripped of anything that identifies you — no name, no email address, no telephone number, no individual response attributed to a person. We do not sell personal information, we do not share it for anyone else's own purposes, and no output of this analysis — no benchmark, model, report, or summary — will identify you or reveal what any one person said.

Survey responses are anonymous to begin with: they are stored without a link to the person who submitted them, and a group must contain at least five responses before it is reported separately. Aggregation for AI purposes happens on top of that, not instead of it.

Text messages

Survey invitations are sent by text message only to people who have opted in themselves, on their own employee portal, by entering their mobile number and ticking a consent box that is never pre-ticked. Agreeing is optional and is never a condition of employment or of taking a survey. You can stop them at any time by replying STOP to any message we send. We record the request immediately and will not text that number again. Reply HELP for information about who is messaging you and how to opt out.

We do not sell or share your SMS opt-in data or personal information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Opting out of text messages does not remove you from the survey — your employer may still invite you by email — and it does not affect your answers to any survey you have already completed.

Who we share it with

Your employer. Summary results, subject to the group threshold described above. Never individual responses.

Service providers. We use third parties to host the platform, store data, deliver email and text messages, and perform automated analysis of written comments. They act on our instructions and may use the information only to provide their service to us.

Legal requirements. Where we are required to by law, or to protect our rights, property, or safety, or that of others.

Aggregated data. We may share or publish aggregated, de-identified trends — never personal information, and never anything traceable back to you, your responses, or your employer. Where such a figure compares named employers, it includes only those who asked to take part.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it with third parties for their own purposes or for marketing.

How long we keep it

Roster information is kept for as long as the employer maintains their account with us, and is deleted on their instruction. Survey responses are retained as anonymous records so historical results stay comparable. Records of opt-out requests are kept indefinitely, because deleting them would mean we could text someone who has asked us not to. Aggregated, de-identified data may be kept indefinitely: it contains no personal information, and removing one contribution from an aggregate is neither possible nor meaningful.

Your choices

You can stop text messages at any time by replying STOP. For access to, correction of, or deletion of information your employer has entered about you, contact your employer in the first instance — they control that record. You can also contact us using the details below and we will help, or pass the request on.

Because survey responses are stored without a link to the person who submitted them, we are generally unable to find or delete an individual response after it has been submitted.

Security

Information is held with encryption in transit and at rest, access is limited to those who need it to operate the service, and employee survey access uses single-use links rather than passwords. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Children

Cairn is a workplace tool and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 16.

Changes

We may update this policy. Material changes will be reflected in the date at the top of this page, and where appropriate we will notify the employers who use Cairn.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or about information held about you, can be sent to cairnhr@gmail.com.