Notice to monitored employees

1. What is Excis Pulse?

Excis Pulse is a piece of software that your employer has installed on your work device. It records information about which applications you use and how actively you're working, so your employer can understand how teams are spending their time and where they need more support, training or tools.

You can confirm whether Pulse is running on your device by looking for the Pulse icon in your system tray (Windows) or menu bar (macOS / Linux). Clicking it opens a window that shows you exactly what Pulse is currently collecting and lets you generate a personal copy of that data.

2. What information Pulse collects

Depending on how your employer has configured it, Pulse may record:

• Application activity — the name and window title of the app you're using in the foreground, and when you switch between them
• Active and idle time — whether your keyboard or mouse has been used in the last few seconds, so Pulse knows you're at the desk
• Periodic screenshots — a JPEG of your active window, taken at most once every few minutes, only if your employer has enabled this setting
• Device identifier — a randomly generated ID that identifies your device, plus the operating system version and hostname
• Connection events — when the agent comes online or goes offline

3. What Pulse does not collect

By design, Pulse never collects any of the following — there's no configuration switch to turn these on:

• Keystrokes or what you type
• Clipboard contents (copy/paste data)
• The contents of emails, chat messages or documents
• Webcam video or microphone audio
• GPS or precise location
• Your personal accounts on personal devices

In addition, Pulse automatically blocks itself from capturing windows belonging to:

• Password managers (1Password, Bitwarden, KeePassXC and similar)
• Any application or window title your employer has added to the redaction list — typically banking, healthcare and legal apps

If your employer has set a working-hours window, Pulse stops collecting entirely outside those hours. It also pauses when your device is idle.

4. Why your employer uses Pulse

Common, lawful reasons employers deploy Pulse include:

• Understanding which tools and apps teams actually use, so they can buy fewer licences for tools nobody uses
• Spotting when a team is overloaded and needs more headcount
• Demonstrating to a client or auditor that contracted work was performed
• Supporting a hybrid- or remote-work policy with capacity data
• Detecting compromised accounts (a sudden change in activity at unusual hours)

Your employer is the data controller for this information. They are required by law (GDPR / UK GDPR) to have a lawful basis for monitoring you and to have completed a Data Protection Impact Assessment before deploying Pulse. Their privacy notice should tell you what their basis is.

5. Who can see your data

• Your manager and your employer's IT/HR teams, subject to your employer's internal access policy
• Excis, only when assisting your employer with technical support — under a contract that prohibits us from using your data for any other purpose
• Nobody else. We do not sell this data, do not share it with advertisers, and do not train AI models on it

6. Your rights

Under the GDPR / UK GDPR, you have the right to:

• Know what data your employer holds about you and why
• Receive a copy of that data in a readable format
• Ask for inaccurate data to be corrected
• Ask for data to be erased where the legal basis no longer applies
• Object to processing on grounds relating to your particular situation
• Complain to your national data protection authority — in the UK, the ICO; in the EU, your local DPA

7. How to see your own data

The fastest way: click the Pulse icon in your system tray and choose "Show my data". The agent generates a JSON file listing every event recorded about you on this device.

For a longer history, or to exercise any of your rights in section 6, contact your employer's HR or Data Protection Officer — their contact details should appear in section 9 below if your employer has filled this template in.

8. Complaints and contacts

If you have concerns about how your data is being handled, the order of escalation is:

1. Your line manager or HR contact
2. Your employer's Data Protection Officer
3. Your national data protection authority

You may also contact Excis at [email protected] — but be aware that we are only a processor here. We can confirm what the software is technically capable of, but we cannot release your data to you without your employer's instruction.

9. For employers: customise this notice before deploying

Replace the following placeholders before publishing this notice to your workforce. We supply a Markdown source on request — email [email protected].