The ETZ GDPR commitment: Fully supporting your recruitment agency as it gets to grips with GDPR

Put it in the diary for 25^th of May: National GDPR day!

Well, the clock continues to run down as we move ever closer to the adoption of the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which comes into force across the UK on 25 May 2018.
In one fell swoop, the new compliance standard for information security puts in place stronger rules to protect personal data and ensure better privacy. The framework that is required to do this creates much more robust IT security, better protecting customer and business information, delivering a much safer operating environment.
General awareness of GDPR in the recruitment trade is very high – 90% according to our survey data. But understanding what GDPR means for recruiters is 81%, suggesting almost one fifth of recruitment firms may not be ready or are unaware of how to prepare for GDPR.

Personal data and your recruitment business

With CVs containing educational and employment histories, qualifications and accreditations and copies of passports and driving licenses, recruitment firms hold important personal details.
Add in the results of psych tests or other selection methodologies, and it is likely the majority of individuals would want to see very high standards of data security in place. Essentially, agencies hold some valued personal information and GDPR is a pretty big deal for the recruitment industry.

Agency responsibility for the GDPR

If you’re responsible for compliance in your agency, it’s likely GDPR might wind up in your lap!
This might seem like a daunting proposition because the framework is very IT-centric. However, it’s unreasonable to expect non-IT people to get up to speed on their own.
Responsibility for GDPR compliance is a shared endeavour and the compliance lead should co-opt with the internal IT function and any external IT service or application providers to understand how to meet the regulations.

The opportunity of the GDPR for recruitment businesses

It’s easy to get the impression that GDPR is a compliance burden, just more Euro bureaucracy handed down from Brussels. (Quite possibly, but it helps if you wear Brexit tinted spectacles!).
However, there is a significant opportunity for many recruitment firms to exploit GDPR to obtain competitive advantage.
Achieving the compliance standard enables recruitment firms to optimise business processes, by identifying how they can be streamlined. Also, firms should look for opportunities to increase efficiency by leveraging technology to automate manual processes.
Better information security enhances business confidence and minimises the potential for IT security failures and PR disasters, and that’s good for every business and the economy in general.
To get on top of how to meet your agency’s obligations under GDPR, it is good for you and your internal team to open a dialogue with your peers and harvest guidance from recruitment industry bodies and trade associations.
It is also well worth conducting a root and branch review of technology within the firm and think about obtaining expert professional advice from recruitment market technology firms offering GDPR consultancy services.

ETZ fully supports GDPR compliance for all its clients

ETZ is bringing out features to support GDPR well before the GDPR enters force. This enshrines GDPR compliance, and clients using ETZ can rest assured that we will fully support your efforts to meet the regulatory standard.
You can see all the survey results and analysis by downloading the full survey report, ‘How ready for GDPR are the UK’s recruitment firms?’ by clicking here.

Photo Credit: GDPR – General Data Protection Regulation courtesy of descrier.co.uk/ Flickr