Last updated: June 2024

B Lab (Switzerland) respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your Personal Data and to comply with the provisions of the Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

This Privacy Policy describes how B Lab (Switzerland) processes Personal Data (as defined under section 1) and other collected data (as defined under section 1.2) when you (the “User(s)” ) use the services (the “Services”) and/or Internet platform (the “Website”) and informs you on your rights.

The Services include the use of the B Impact Assessment and SDG Action Manager tools, B Analytics, the STI Benchmark, and all direct or indirect support provided during the participation in the program (online questionnaires, templates, presentations, workshops, webinars).

By using our Services and Website, you expressly agree that B Lab (Switzerland) collects and processes your Personal Data pursuant to the provisions of this Privacy Policy.

If you have any inquiries, please contact us at the following address:

support@blab-switzerland.ch

1. Personal Data

We process the Personal Data that you, your representative or the organisation you work for

provide us, such as:

  • First name;

  • Family name;

  • Gender;

  • Email;

  • Telephone number;

  • Contact language;

  • Position held within the company.

Such Personal Data may be provided to us by email, online registration to the programme, online questionnaires, telephone communications, use of our Services or directly by B Lab (Switzerland) staff.

In addition, B Lab (Switzerland) collects specific data on companies through the use of the tools.

B Impact Assessment and SDG Action Manager and any other questionnaire established by B Lab (Switzerland) within the framework of the STI activities.

2. Why do we process your Personal Data

  1. Managing and administering our relationship with you, including contacting you and identifying you;

  2. Performing our contractual duties, in particular informing you on how your company’s current impact data compares to your company’s historical impact;

  3. Processing and responding to requests, enquiries or complaints;

  4. Managing and holding any event or conference we organize;

  5. Providing, monitoring and improving B Lab (Switzerland)’s services;

  6. Sending newsletters and marketing material.

3. Basis of the processing

  1. A contractual relationship;

  2. Any legal obligation where B Lab (Switzerland) is required to process the Personal Data, such as reporting or keeping records for legal purposes (tax, corporate, accounting, financial regulations);

  3. Complying with any mandatory request or duties towards governmental authorities, law enforcement agencies, regulatory bodies or courts;

  4. Establishing, exercising or defending the legal rights of B Lab (Switzerland) or for the purposes of legal proceedings;

  5. For any other legitimate purpose or overriding interest of B Lab (Switzerland).

4. Transfer of personal data to third parties

  1. We may disclose your Personal Data for the purposes set out above to the following recipients:

    • External service providers, such as IT and infrastructure, maintenance, analytics and telecommunications service providers ;

    • B Lab (Switzerland) partners or supporting online services for the Swiss Triple Impact project;

    • Third parties and authorities / courts if such disclosure is necessary to undertake our contractual duties towards you or if necessary to comply with our legal obligations.

5. Transfer outside of Switzerland

You are hereby informed that B Lab (Switzerland) uses supporting partners and online services held by companies whose servers may not be located in Switzerland. In this context, you are hereby informed that certain jurisdictions do not have legislation providing an appropriate level of protection within the meaning of the DPA/GDPR.

If your Personal Data and other collected data has to be shared with such companies and the conditions of the DPA and/or GDPR are not met, B Lab (Switzerland) shall request your consent through the review and acceptance of their own Privacy Policies.

6. Storage and Security

Your Personal Data is entered into B Lab (Switzerland)’s electronic systems and paper files. We take all reasonable and necessary measures according to accepted industry standards to ensure that your Personal Data is processed and stored securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy. B Lab (Switzerland) strives to implement appropriate administrative, technical, and physical measures that are reasonably necessary to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your Personal Data. However, no method of transmission over the Internet or method of electronic storage is 100% secure and B Lab cannot guarantee its absolute security.

7. Retaining of Personal Data

We retain your Personal Data as long as necessary to achieve the purposes mentioned above under section 3 or until you withdraw your consent, provided that we are not authorized to retain the Personal Data for another reason (e.g. any legitimate interest or legal obligation).

8. Your rights

You have a right of access pursuant to Article 8 DPA (Article 15 GDPR), a right of rectification where the information we hold about you is inaccurate pursuant to Article 5 DPA (Article 16 GDPR), a right to request that your Personal Data be erased according to Article 5 LPD (Article 17 GDPR) or to restrict the use of your personal information pursuant to Articles 12, 13, 15 DPA (article 18 GDPR), a right to object to the processing of Personal Data pursuant to Article 4 DPA (article 21 GDPR) and, where applicable, data portability according to Article 20 GDPR. 

You may also submit a complaint with the competent data protection authority if you have any concerns (Article 77 GDPR). You may withdraw your consent at any time. Please note that such withdrawal shall only apply for future collecting/processing of your Personal Data and does not impact the collecting/processing which occurred in the past. Please note that B Lab (Switzerland) may nevertheless process your Personal Data in presence of legal obligations or an overriding interest of B Lab (Switzerland), including exercising its legal rights. Withdrawing your consent may lead to the end of the business relationship with B Lab (Switzerland).

9. Miscellaneous

Please inform us as soon as possible if any of your Personal Data changes (including your correspondence details). Failure to provide accurate data or to update data when applicable may have a detrimental impact on our ability to provide our services. 

You are liable for the accuracy and extensiveness of the data transferred to B Lab (Switzerland) and for providing updates should your Personal Data change. B Lab (Switzerland) cannot be held responsible for any situation that may arise due to us having any inaccurate, incomplete, inauthentic or otherwise deficient personal data that you or a third party has provided to us. 

This Privacy Policy may be amended at any time, in which case you shall be informed via email. Any new version shall be published on the Website and deemed accepted by Users if Users do not react within seven days as of the email communication.

B Lab – Cookies Policy

  1. What are Cookies?

Cookies are small files which are stored on your device when you visit a website. Cookies document your visit to a website and help gather information on how often certain areas of the website are visited and tailor the website to be more useful and user-friendly. Cookies may also allow to track and implement your preferences and settings. Cookies can also be used to establish anonymized statistics about a browsing experience.

There are multiple types or categories of cookies, which can be summarized as follows: 

  • Session cookies: temporary cookies stored in your browser memory until the browser is closed. 

  • Persistent cookies: cookies that are saved on your device and that are not deleted automatically when you close your browser.

  • First party cookies: cookies that are set by the website you are visiting, only that website can read them.

  • Third party cookies: cookies that are set by external services used by a website.

The purpose of cookies is to enable the website to remember your preferences for a certain period of time. Every time you visit our website, you will be prompted to accept or refuse cookies. 

Please note that when cookies are necessary in order for web pages to function (so-called operational cookies), they do not require your consent. If you do not wish such cookies, please do not use your website.

 2. The Cookies we use

First-party cookies

We mostly use “first-party cookies”, that are set and controlled by us, not by any third party.

Strictly necessary cookies

These cookies are essential for you to browse our website and use its features. In particular: 

  • Authentication cookies: such as cookies allowing to remember your settings preferences (e.g. user name). 

  • Technical cookies (required by some IT systems): such as cooking allowing the maintenance of a secure session for you during your visit on our website or the translation of the website.

Consent-policy: Used for cookie banner parameters, stored for 12 months.

XSRF-TOKEN : Used for security reasons, stored for duration of session. 

bSession: Used for system effectiveness measurement, stored for 30 minutes.

hs: Used for security reasons,  stored for duration of session. 

ssr-caching. Used to indicate the system from which the site was rendered, stored for 1 minute.

svSession: Used in connection with user login, stored for 2 years.

Others cookies

  • Site preferences cookies: in order to provide you with a great experience on our website, we provide the functionality to set your preferences for how this website runs when you use it. In order to remember your preferences, we need to set cookies so that this information can be called whenever you interact with a page is affected by your preferences.
    wixLanguage: Used on multilingual websites to save user language preference, stored for 12 months.

Third-party cookies

In some special cases, our pages display content from external providers (e.g. Zoho). In order to be able to view this third-party content, you first have to accept their specific terms and conditions, including their cookie policies. Please note that “third-party cookies” are outside of our control. The following section details which third-party cookies you might encounter through our website. 

Third-party providers:

  • Zoho

  • Youtube

  • Facebook

  • Eventbrite

  • LinkedIn

  • Instagram

  • Google Maps

 3. How to manage Cookies?

Every time you visit our website, you will be asked to accept or refuse cookies.

You can prevent the setting of cookies by manually adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser “Help” section). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality and features of the website. You can also delete all cookies that are already stored on your device by clearing your browsing history. This will remove the cookies from all websites you have visited. Be aware that you may lose automatically saved information (i.e. login details, site preferences).

It is therefore recommended that you leave all cookies on if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use.