Co-determination
If you have a works council, Knowhand needs its approval. In Germany, the mere capability of software to monitor is enough for co-determination. The works agreement template for Austria and Germany is ready.
Privacy and works council: what Knowhand stores and what it doesn't.
What Knowhand stores, who sees what, how long data is kept and what Knowhand deliberately doesn't do. For IT, data protection and the works council, with all documents.
- No values per person
- No rankings
- Fixed deletion periods
“What can the employer see about individual employees?”
Last updated 25 September 2026
The essentials for the works council
The questions works councils ask first, answered briefly.
Voluntary use
Profile, requests and help offers are voluntary. The works agreement template states that not using Knowhand leads to no disadvantages.
Leaving the company
When someone leaves, an admin removes them from the board. The profile is pseudonymised, open requests are closed, solved ones stay in the archive as "Former member". You set the deadline in the works agreement.
Retention during the contract
Requests stay on the board with their help offers and questions until an admin deletes them or the board is deleted. The person who asked can close a request but not delete it. You can agree in the works agreement how long archive content stays.
Changes
Knowhand announces new sub-processors at least 30 days in advance by email to the admins. The works agreement template provides that the employer forwards such announcements to the works council.
Contact
Paul Krügel answers questions about your review by email at hallo@knowhand.com, within one working day.
What Knowhand stores and who sees it
| Data | Required | Visible to |
|---|---|---|
| Name and email address | Required: yes | Visible to: all members of the board |
| Photo, team, role, summary | Required: no | Visible to: all members |
| Categories, tags, booking link, contact preference | Required: no | Visible to: all members |
| Capacity and away until date | Required: no | Visible to: all members |
| Requests, attachments, help offers, archive | Required: when used | Visible to: all members |
| Questions and pointers | Required: when used | Visible to: only the creator and those involved |
| Thanks counter and number of solved requests | Required: automatic | Visible to: only the person |
| Board metrics (list below) | Required: automatic | Visible to: admins, totals only, from ten members on |
| Email delivery logs, 90 days | Required: automatic | Visible to: not visible on the board |
Which metrics admins see
The complete list, identical to § 4 of the works agreement template. Only as a total for the whole board, only from ten members on, with no filter by team, location or person.
| Metric | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Members | number of members on the board |
| Active in 30 days | number of members who posted a request, offered help or changed their profile in the last 30 days; sign-ins and page views do not count |
| Requests in total and this month | number of requests on the board |
| Solve rate | share of solved requests among all completed requests |
| Median time to the first help offer | hours from the request to the first offer, as the median across all requests with an offer |
| Offer within 48 hours | share of requests with an offer in the first 48 hours, with denominator |
| Clicks on suggestions | share of the suggestions shown while writing a request (solved requests and people) that were clicked, with denominator; neither the suggested person nor who clicked is stored |
| Nudges after 48 hours | number of requests for which a nudge was sent after 48 hours without a reply |
| Pointers | number of "I know someone" pointers |
| Questions | number of questions to people who asked |
What the export contains
Knowhand shows no values per person, not even to admins. Admins can export the board's data (data portability); the export shows who posted which request or offered help, with the time.
It contains the members with email address, role, join date and profile, the requests with author and times, and help offers, questions and pointers with person and time. Attachments are listed only with name, type and size.
Your works agreement decides who may use the export and for what. The template rules out per-person evaluation, including through the export, and bars using insights from Knowhand for employment measures (§ 4).
How Knowhand suggests people
- Emails about new requests and nudges only go to members whose self-maintained profile matches the request: same category or same tags.
- Nudge after 48 hours without a reply: to at most three matching people, and only to people who set "I have capacity right now" and are not away.
- Suggestions while writing a request: solved requests from the archive and up to three people with matching categories or tags, again only with capacity and not away.
- No history and no performance data: how often someone helped or reacted to a nudge plays no part.
- For nudges, only the email delivery is stored, and deleted after 90 days. For suggestions, Knowhand only counts how often they were shown and clicked; it stores neither which person was suggested nor who clicked.
What Knowhand does not do
- No leaderboard, no points, no ranking, no values per person
- No last-online indicator, no per-person response times
- No calendar, mail or directory permissions. With Google, Knowhand receives name, email address, account ID and the address of the profile picture
- No analysis of emails, chats or documents
- No analytics or advertising cookies, no cookie banner
Where and for how long
- Hosting, database, files: Frankfurt (EU). Email: EU. Payment: Stripe (EU).
- Vercel, Supabase, Resend and Cloudflare (bot protection of the sign-in form) are headquartered in the USA. Any transfer is covered by EU Standard Contractual Clauses (list in the DPA).
- Trial: 30 days, then frozen, deleted after another 60 days. Cancellation: readable for 60 days, then deleted. Deletion by the admin: final 14 days after confirmation.
- Delete account as a member: immediately, the profile is pseudonymised.
- Email delivery logs: 90 days. Backups: daily, 7 days.
- AI assistant: off by default. When on, the entered request text and the board category names go to Google Vertex AI in Frankfurt or to your own endpoint.