Privacy policy
Last updated July 2026
WorkForward is staff-scheduling software for small businesses. This policy explains what personal information the service handles and how it is protected. It is written to align with Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). It is a plain-language starting point and should be reviewed by legal counsel before you rely on it for your business.
Who controls your data
When a business signs up, that business is the owner and controller of its employees' information. WorkForward acts as the software provider that stores and processes it on the business's behalf. Employees who have questions about their own data should contact their employer first.
What we collect
- Account details: name, email address, and role.
- Scheduling data: shifts, availability, time-off requests, swaps, and confirmations.
- Time & attendance: clock-in/out times and, where the business enables it, the approximate location of a punch.
- HR records the business chooses to store: pay rate or salary, hire date, employment type, staff number, phone, address, birthday, emergency contact, and certifications.
- Device tokens used to deliver notifications, if you enable them.
How we use it
Information is used only to operate the scheduling service for the business: building and sharing schedules, tracking hours and labour cost, coordinating coverage, and sending the notifications you turn on. We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it for advertising.
Location data
Location is only captured at the moment of a clock-in or clock-out, and only when the business has turned on geofencing and the device grants permission. It is used to show whether a punch happened at the workplace. It is never tracked continuously or in the background, and punches always succeed even if location is unavailable.
Who can see what
Access follows role. Managers and owners can see their team's scheduling, hours, and HR records. Employees can see the schedule, their own record and pay, and coworkers' names and roles — not coworkers' pay, contact details, or HR information. These boundaries are enforced by server-side security rules, not only in the interface.
Retention and deletion
Data is kept while the business's account is active. A business can remove an employee's record from its team, and can request deletion of its workspace. Employees may ask their employer to access or correct their information. Requests that reach us directly will be routed to the responsible business.
Storage and processing
WorkForward runs on Google Firebase (authentication and the Firestore database) and is hosted on Vercel. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest by those providers. See the security page for more detail.
Contact
Privacy questions can be sent to privacy@workforward.ca. Update this address to a monitored inbox before launch.