91% of the Human Resources departments heard about the new European regulations on the consumers’ personal data protection. However, only 48% of them are preparing themselves for its entry into force and only 2% are actually ready. A real nightmare for the executives.

On the 25th of May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation will enter into force. This has been announced two years ago. However, only two months before the actual coming into effect of this new legislation, hardly two percent of the HR departments say they’re ready to make their personnel enforce those confidentiality rules.

Barely 50% of them are currently taking the necessary measures to comply with those reinforced rules. This is the assessment made by the Belgian HR service provider Acerta according to a survey of 155 HR directors.

50% of the HR departments will be ready on time for the GDPR

Many HR departments are not really enthusiastic towards the GDPR. For 10% of those interviewed the GDPR is like “smashing a fly with a hammer” 11% consider that the GDPR is “no realistic for the small enterprises” and 47% consider that “it is normal to respect private life within HR departments but the GDPR is not the best way of doing it”.

Michael Zahlen, senior consultant of Acerta Consult thinks that: “The GDPR lumps together the employer-worker relation and the big internet companies which bomb us with targeted adverts. Unfortunately there’s no difference made between Human Resources and Marketing.” Even though only two percent of the surveyed departments are ready for the new legislation, 48% confirm being actively working on measures to make their processes compliant with the GDPR. If everything goes well, half will be on time.

Half of the HR departments don’t know the real consequences of the new legislation on private life

HR departments actually don’t really know what consequences the GDPR will have on them. More than 50% explain that they don’t know how long they will keep enforcing stricter rules in private life after the entry in force of the new regulation. As far as the content of the new law is concerned, half of the interrogated people also ignore the meaning of the “right to be forgotten” (55%) or the “right to rectification” (50%) that the workers have.