The GDPR and the new UK Data Protection Act is forcing a review of many business processes, and thereby challenging lots of processes and forms.
We are particularly concerned about new employees, and what is ‘done’ to them in two respects.
New employees need to feel at home, and become as productive as possible in the shortest amount of time. This requires some foresight and effort from Management prior to the start date, as well as planning your employee’s induction process, but in turn this can reap real and quick returns for everyone involved. The sooner a new staff member is made aware of the critical and regular policies and procedures within their new workplace, the sooner they are able to comply with company expectations. Your staff induction programme should be delivered in a simple format that explains any legal requirements that impact on their job role, e.g. health & safety requirements, as well as your working procedures, rules and practices, your expectations of them and their specific responsibilities.
In addition to helping new staff, an induction process can be useful for helping employees who are returning from extended leave, or are taking on a new role in the business.
Prepare an Induction Checklist
Most employers remember what they need to take a new employee through, usually based on what they did last time, invariably without checking whether the last inductee actually found it to be of any help and benefit. It is good practice to have a document that outlines:
- Pre-start – things like computer set-up, email set-up, vehicles etc.;
- On the first day – show emergency exits, explain software, etc.; and
- The first week – training sessions, larger overview of organisation;
It needn’t be that long. However, we would recommend at least some form of checklist that covers the basics of your employee induction process. For example, you can include items such as;
- Introduction to Team Leader or direct Manager.
- Obtaining/checking personal details.
- Office/work times.
- Checking understanding of employment contractual requirements, including the contents of the Handbook.
- Performance standards and expectations of new employee over various milestones, e.g. first week, first month, probationary period and first year.
- Introduction to team members with explanation of team roles and responsibilities.
- Organisational chart and introductions to other key people outside of their team.
- Showing them where they are working, layout and ergonomics of workspace.
- Homeworkers will need to complete a home-working self risk assessment.
- Security issues and access to the building.
- Health, Safety and Welfare related procedures, rules, requirements and how to safely operate work equipment.
- IT and any job-related data protection obligations.
We have taken the opportunity to review our template documentation to be GDPR compliant. The revised induction checklist addresses the issue which all employers need to deal with, i.e. ensuring training in data protection and being able to prove that training – Click here.
Employment Details Form and Personal Data
We recommend to our clients that there are important key checks that you need to undertake once you have made an appointment, and preferably establish before, if not soon after, they have taken up employment. One can also ask more legitimate, yet personal questions about an employee once they have been given a job offer than before. This includes checking they have the legal right to work in the UK, if they have claimed they have training qualifications then checking that they can provide proof of such assertions, and if they will be required to drive as part of their job requirements, that they hold the appropriate driving licence.
We have now taken the opportunity to review our template documentation to be GDPR compliant. The revised employment details form addresses the issue which all employers need to deal with, i.e. ensuring training in data protection and being able to prove that training.
The New Employee Employment Details form is designed to address two concerns:
- Not to be discriminatory, and only elicit that information which can be justified.
- To ensure that new recruits are clear on what information you are likely to hold about them, and what you do with it.
The form is, therefore, more likely to be justifiable in asking for medical information from new employees, and gives further details about data security – Click here.
Data Protection Regulations also require that you periodically check that the personal information you retain on your employees is correct. We recommend that you use our Existing Employment Details Form to ensure that the information you retain about your existing employees is up-to-date, but also reminds your employees about the key information you hold about them under the Privacy Notice contained within the form. We believe that if you do this, they are less likely to submit subject access requests, which are probably going to be more time consuming and potentially more contentious. Perhaps more importantly, it means you are less likely to be contacting the wrong person should you need to contact their next of kin, or need to write to them – Click here.
We hope you find these forms of use, and as they are in Word format, you can adapt them further for your purposes. If you have any other questions on the issue of either induction or data protection, please speak with our HR Consultants.
