In many countries, individuals are identified by a unique number issued by the government. Probably the most ubiquitous example is the Social Security Number in the United States, which is generally necessary to obtain employment, open a bank account or obtain a driver’s license, and is used for credit monitoring and other private sector purposes. … Continue Reading
A client put this to us the other day – assuming that a photo or video footage of a current or former employee counts as his personal data, which it does, how far will his GDPR “right to be forgotten” allow him to reach into the employer’s records and require that image to be deleted?… Continue Reading
With a clear link between increased employee wellbeing (both in terms of physical and mental health) and reduced sickness absence, many employers may use renewed New Year ambitions to adopt or promote employee wellbeing programmes. Businesses have introduced measures including step challenges with free pedometers, fruit ‘desk drops’ and health monitoring stations in the workplace. … Continue Reading
Judge Dedov is the one to watch here. He was the only one out of the European Court of Human Rights panel not responsible for a recent decision on employee surveillance which many may feel tilts European law around workplace monitoring altogether too far towards the interests of the employee. Ms Ribalda and her four … Continue Reading
It all began as an everyday tale of Montenegrin academics and some animals, and ended up in a European Court of Human Rights decision with potentially significant consequences for employers across the EU and the UK.… Continue Reading
With apologies for the interruption to this series, here are two further reader questions on the GDPR as it will apply to employers in the UK. I have heard that my corporate email address is my personal data. Does that mean that a DSAR sent to my employer should bring me copies of everything in … Continue Reading
Illinois enacted its Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”) in 2008 to regulate, among other things, employer collection and use of employee biometric information. Biometrics is defined as the measurement and analysis of physical and behavioral characteristics. This analysis produces biometric identifiers that include things like fingerprints, iris or face scans, and voiceprints, all of which … Continue Reading
Here are answers to two more questions arising from next year’s GDPR, this time on website recruitment and data breach notification. More to follow in this series soon. We have a contact form section on our website to allow people to submit details (name, email, phone number & CV) if they want to be informed … Continue Reading
This is the next in our series of posts on questions raised at our recent GDPR webinar. If you have any views or further queries in these areas, please do get in touch. What impact will the GDPR have on Model Clauses? Model Clauses are standard contractual terms adopted by the European Commission for the … Continue Reading
What would count as sharing data with a third party? For example, if we are booking employees on an external training course where we would only provide their name, would this amount to sharing data with a third party? The sharing of an employee’s name with an external training provider would certainly amount to the … Continue Reading
At our recent webinar on “GDPR Compliance: How UK Employers Can Meet the 25 May 2018 Deadline” we were asked a number of questions via the chat facility. Those questions showed that with less than a year to run and much to do before then, there is still widespread uncertainty as to the detail of … Continue Reading
Exactly one year from today, Brexit notwithstanding, the EU General Data Protection Regulation comes into effect. This is aimed primarily at commercial progressing of customer data but still has significant ramifications for HR’s handling of employee data. Compliance with the Data Protection Act as it stands will not be enough to protect against breaches of … Continue Reading
Polish Data Protection rules are quite restrictive when it comes to the information that employers may safely request from the candidate or the employee but now there is a new question for them to consider: are you male or female? This is not quite as silly as it sounds. As a rule you can tell … Continue Reading
Foreign employers posting employees to France temporarily, whether to provide services for a client based in France or for their own sake or as part of an intra-group mobility programme, must comply with strict legal requirements. These relate in particular to providing for those staff a set of mandatory employment rules applicable while they are … Continue Reading
As a follow up to our previous blogpost, a new federal law, the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (DTSA), which went into place on May 11, provides a federal cause of action for trade secret misappropriation. One important employment law aspect of the DTSA that has not received a lot of attention is the requirement that … Continue Reading
As reported last week in our Global Business IP & Technology Blog, the Defend Trade Secrets Act is currently on President Obama’s desk awaiting his imminent signature. Once enacted, the new law will provide the first federal civil claim for misappropriation of trade secrets. Although the new law is monumental in several respects, at least … Continue Reading
So there it is – in a tremendous boost for transatlantic relations, the European Court of Justice has decided that America is not to be trusted with the personal data of EU residents. That is not exactly the way the decision is phrased, of course, which (so far as relevant to UK HR) is more … Continue Reading
On 1 September 2015 new requirements relating to the storage of personal data will come into force in Russia. These changes are highly controversial, as they will require any databases used to process the personal data of Russian citizens to be physically located in Russia. When these changes were first announced it seemed they would … Continue Reading
How would you feel about your employer knowing where you are 24 hours a day? News reaches us of a claim by an employee dismissed in the US for deleting a smartphone app Xora which her management had required her to install as part of its mobile workforce management systems. Xora bills itself (with callous … Continue Reading
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently sent letters to numerous, unnamed publicly-traded US companies requesting every nondisclosure agreement, confidentiality agreement, severance agreement, and settlement agreement the companies have entered into with employees since the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) was enacted, as well as any other documents related to … Continue Reading
The rules and regulations which affect your UK business are many and varied. Compliance is key to keeping safe the reputation of both the company and management and avoiding potentially significant criminal and civil penalties. Squire Sanders’ experts will present a range of topics which Japanese Managers need to be aware of in order to … Continue Reading
This post continues our short series dealing with the obligations and conditions which may be imposed by EU privacy law on businesses setting up whistleblowing hotlines in the region. See our earlier posts: Part 1 and Part 2. Specific Data Security Requirements The use of appropriate security measures to protect personal data from unauthorised use or … Continue Reading
Czech entities regularly transfer personal data to the United States. These companies often have a US sister or parent company or are using US servers (e.g. for US cloud services). Except for the EU countries, it is in the US where most of the personal data transferred from the Czech Republic ends up. The European … Continue Reading
Every employer will recognise the sinking feeling which accompanies receipt of a data subject access request from a current or former employee. Not only is it a fair indicator that he is considering doing something unpleasant to you, but you face also the prospect of wading through your entire server, waist-deep in irrelevancies, to find … Continue Reading
