How I have come to embrace GDPR.

HORROR

I first became aware of GDPR about a year ago at a business seminar. As I listened to the facts my heart sank, and I pretty much decided I’d have to close my recruitment consultancy – how could I possibly comply with this legislation and stay solvent?

DENIAL

I then went through a stage of thinking – surely this can’t be relevant, after all we’re leaving the EU. Surely we don’t really need to do all this?

ACCEPTANCE

Slowly in the pursuing months I learnt more about GDPR – I attended seminars and used the ICO website. I gradually accepted that GDPR was here to stay and worked out what it actually meant to my business and how we would manage it.  I realised that we were actually already compliant in many areas of GDPR.

JOY

So a year on where are we? We have updated our website, cleansed our database, shredded unneeded paper, reviewed our security, systems and processes. My team are finding our new processes easier to work with.

So my message to other business owners who may be somewhere along the GDPR track is – use this as a way of improving your systems, cleaning up your data and generally running a tighter ship. For help I recommend starting here: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/

Julia Pennington, Managing Director, Copeland Automotive Recruitment