Data protection
Editor's message: The General Data Protection Regulation was incorporated into UK law, as the UK GDPR, when the Brexit transition period ended on 31 December 2020. So the compliance obligations remain the same and data protection continues to be an important item on the HR agenda. In any event, being able to demonstrate high data protection standards will be essential for British organisations wanting to continue to do business with the EU in the future.
The UK GDPR places emphasis on accountability and being able to demonstrate that you have the procedures in place to protect your employees’ personal data rights. Even relatively small organisations will process a large amount of employee data, so you will need to ensure that time and resources are invested in data protection.
Some of the key areas of data protection that HR needs to be on top of include:
- providing your employees and other data subjects with privacy notices, setting out specified information about how you will use the information you gather on them;
- ensuring that you have the right processes in place to deal with special category data lawfully – this is sensitive information about, for example, your employees’ health, race or trade union membership;
- being ready to respond to data subject access requests from employees, job applicants or others; and
- ensuring that third-party data processors, such as benefits providers, have appropriate security measures in place to protect the personal data of your employees.
The Data Protection Act 2018 supplements the provisions of the UK GDPR.
Susie Munro, senior employment law editor
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