Are you naughty or nice? 

Do not worry, I am not going to make the joke about data protection and Father Christmas’s naughty or nice list. But, what I am going to do is ask whether you, as an employer, are being naughty or nice with employee personal data? To ensure your organisation earns a place on the right side of the list, here are a few tips.  

Privacy, as we here at Securys have said more than once, is about trust. Build that trust with your employees by demonstrating that you care about their data just as you care about the data of everyone else who interacts with your business.  

Research we have conducted as part of our Privacy Made Positive® research proves this point. Our research shows that employees are more willing to join an employer they trust with their data and more importantly, they’ll stay longer and work harder. We think that good privacy practice is a competitive advantage. 

Top tips to drive employee trust 

• Be transparent. Provide your employees and candidates with privacy notices that are clear and accurate and readily available. 

• Offer timely and robust feedback to unsuccessful recruitment candidates informing them why they did not get the job. This will not only help them improve their chances with their next job application but may mean they do not feel the need to officially request their data.  

• Do not demand more data from your employees than you really need. Remember that whatever you hold, you need to protect. Put simply, the greater the quantity you possess, the larger the attack surface. And, to that end, why store data you do not actually use? 

• Consider the possibility of providing your employees ready access to their own data? Either via a self-service platform or by allowing them read only access to their files. This approach proves you have nothing to hide and may reduce the number of access requests you receive.  

• Do not keep data for long than it is needed. Ask yourself, for how long after their departure do you retain the bank account details of former employees? Delete bank details after their final salary payment. If it turns out you need to give them more money, they will happily give you their bank details again, believe me. 
• And last but not least, remind yourself or read the principles behind the privacy legislation(s) that you must abide by, and ask yourself if you are following them. Not sure if you are? Then we can help. To talk to us about your privacy and security needs click here.

Privacy is not just a fundamental human right, it’s the right thing to do and, once more, for the people in the back, it builds trust.