What you’re being asked to do

A company — your employer, a clinic, a site you work on — has asked you for emergency contacts: who to call if something happens to you.

You are not handing them over. You fill them in once, in a place that is yours, and then decide whether that company may read them. You can change what is in there at any time, and you can end their access without asking anyone. Until you decide, there is nothing for them to read.

The invitation

An email, from a company you recognise. It carries their name and a link. The link is good for seven days.

If it has run out, or it never arrived, ask them to send it again. Nothing is lost by resending, and nothing you have already filled in is undone by it.

It arrived at the address that company knows you by — your work address, if they are your employer.

You sign in with something of your own — a personal email address or your phone. With a phone, the code arrives on WhatsApp. If your employer invited you as one of their own people, you type your own on the link page, it becomes your login, and your employer never sees it. If someone invited you from outside, not as your employer, at your own email or phone, that is already your login.

That separation is the point. Your details are yours, not your employer’s, so the way you reach them cannot be something your employer controls — which is also why the address you sign in with cannot be on the company’s domain. If it were, leaving the company would take your account with it.

Note

Pick something you will still have in five years — a personal mailbox, one that does not belong to an employer or anyone who could close it without asking you, or a number you plan to keep.

It is your way in: every sign-in code goes there. You can add a second way to sign in and change either one later — Signing in covers how. It is also what makes you the same person when a second company invites you, so what you have already filled in follows you instead of starting again.

The code goes to you. You get a six-digit code at your own address or on WhatsApp, never at the mailbox the invitation landed in. Once you have joined, the code goes to you whatever address is typed on that page — so a forwarded link is not a way in. If you have both an email and a phone, you choose which one gets it.

Some invitations are a shared link or a printed QR code — taped to a reception desk, handed out at a site entrance, printed into an onboarding pack. There is no email in that case: you supply your own email or phone yourself, and, if you are asked for it, the work address that tells the company who you are.

Being invited creates nothing they can read. It creates your name on a list and an empty card behind it. Everything that follows is your doing.

Filling in your details

One company, one permission. Signing in takes you to the companies that have invited you — straight through, if there is only one. Each of them gets its own permission from you: you give it to that company alone and you end it for that company alone, and nothing you do to one touches another.

Your answers are one set, not a copy per company. Fill in a phone number for one of them and it is already there when another asks for the same thing — you are not keeping two versions of yourself up to date. What each company differs in is the asking: it only ever sees the fields on its own form.

Your name is already filled in, as the company typed it when they invited you. Correct it if it is wrong — from here on it is yours, not theirs.

The fields are the ones that company asks for. Usually your own details, then who to call first and who to call if there is no answer. Mandatory ones are marked; the rest you can leave empty.

You can add fields of your own. A doctor’s number, a second address, anything the company did not think to ask for. Anything you add belongs to this card and goes to this company along with everything else — it is not a private note.

Saving is a draft. You can fill it in over several sittings, and none of it is visible to anyone while you do. The company sees only that the invitation is still unanswered.

Granting access is a separate step, and it is deliberate. The button stays off until every mandatory field is filled in. Press it and that company can read this card from then on — read only, nothing more. You get a confirmation email with your Spherum ID in it.

After that, keeping it current is the whole point. Change a number and the company sees the new one; there is nothing to re-send and nobody to notify. If you are in a hospital corridor, the number they call is the one you left there this morning, not the one you gave at onboarding three years ago.

What a company can and cannot see sets out the limits of what you have just granted, and Revoking access covers ending it.

If you were also given a physical token — a wallet card with a QR code on it — that is a separate decision, and also yours. Linking it to yourself is what makes it work, and nobody can do it for you. The Tokens guide explains what a token shows when it is scanned and how to switch one off.