The Benefits of Building A Privacy-Aware Team
Compliance

The Benefits of Building A Privacy-Aware Team

It’s no secret that companies have been adopting privacy-first policies and reaping the benefits, but company wide policies don’t just happen. It’s up to those behind the scenes to follow through and start building a privacy-aware team, sometimes from the ground up. This leaves heads of departments, supervisors and managers tasked with the granular application of privacy practices within a company.

To do so, leaders are charged with promoting privacy awareness on a team level. Doing so isn’t in vain. Privacy-aware teams benefit in a number of ways: through privacy education and training teams can lower their overhead costs by using compliant and privacy-secure practices; adhering to privacy regulations contributes to creativity and innovation; and creating a privacy-minded team environment boosts productivity and efficiency.

Privacy Education Lowers Long Term Costs

Teams must stay on top of ever-changing privacy regulations. To do this, each team must be informed on compliant practices. So education and training is where departmental privacy awareness and building a privacy-aware team begins.

Data is different for every department; but a misstep of an unwitting employee on any team is at the expense of the organization as a whole. It’s crucial that every department handles their respective data securely and compliantly. This starts with privacy education. Regulation penalties are sizable while the costs associated with a data breach are astronomical.  Regulatory practices reinforce data security. Knowing how to compliantly handle data in line with privacy laws helps teams avoid government penalties and the damaging tolls of a breach.

Privacy training on a departmental level educates each team on the applicable privacy regulations they are subject to and the security risks they face when handling their department’s data. Some privacy education for each department may overlap, like secure and compliant data storing methods. But other teams may be subject to further regulations that need more involved explanations, like the HR department. Equipping your team with the knowledge of exactly how privacy practices apply to them, gives every team the knowledge and know-how to avoid costly noncompliant and risky behavior.

When learning about regulations, departments may feel hobbled by the restrictions. Certain privacy laws may reveal limitations to data collection and data processing. While these measures seem hindering, they actually promote innovation.

Privacy Compliance Can Spark Team Innovation

When data is a company’s biggest asset, privacy regulations can be seen as a constraint. Rather than feeling burdened by raising privacy awareness within their departments, team leaders can look forward to an unexpected byproduct of privacy-focused practices: innovation.

Creativity actually flourishes in restrictive environments. Limitations created by privacy awareness are no different. By promoting privacy within a department, leaders may inadvertently restrict the way data is used and processed. This doesn’t limit its possibilities, it will likely require the team to create a more efficient or more creative process. Use this time to revisit and revamp old systems.

With a privacy focus, employees are tasked with finding new ways to incorporate privacy into their processes and tasks. And they do. Privacy has been found to be an “enabler of innovation.” Companies that have promoted and invested in privacy as a whole reported greater innovation from doing so, but such work starts on a team level. Developers might find new privacy features to build into software; analysts may see new behavior in the same data set. Drawing privacy boundaries that teams must work within encourages employees to create better, privacy-centered solutions resulting in new developments in product and workflows.

While some teams are cornered into creation and innovation, other teams may not be in the same position to do so. These leaders will still see another favorable consequence—improved performance and productivity.

A Privacy-Centered Team Increases Productivity

Like consumers, employees also have concerns about their privacy at work. This distracting anxiety affects their focus and performance resulting in lower productivity. Organizations that promote and invest in privacy report increased productivity and efficiency; and the same holds true at a departmental level.

Promoting privacy awareness within a team setting by creating a transparent, privacy forward environment combats insecure feelings employees have about their data. Empowered employees have been proven to perform better. When employees have data confidence, they direct more energy toward their work resulting in higher performance. Confidence in their data safety is especially important; when employees feel their private information is taken care of, they are more likely to handle company data with more caution.

There are a few paths leaders can take to cultivate and begin building a privacy-aware team.

Employee data should be treated with the same care and standard as company data. For instance, if privacy regulation in your company’s jurisdiction is subject to an access clause, your team should also be able to access their work data. Implementing vendors and software that promote privacy-minded practices is another way to further privacy awareness. By utilizing other privacy focused systems, a privacy ecosystem is created within the team. Through this, privacy is encouraged in everything the team does. The result is an empowered team able to work without worry, leading to increased productivity and efficiency.

Conclusion

Privacy-focused approaches are often talked about in broad terms but it comes down to managers and supervisors to implement privacy practices on a day-to-day basis. To do so easily, department leaders can advocate for privacy awareness within their teams. Providing specialized training and creating a privacy-minded environment helps bring a sweeping idea like privacy into reality, and with work, leaders can begin building a privacy-aware team. Staff will end up feeling data empowered. Leaders will be happy to see lower costs and improved production. When privacy awareness is put into practice, it doesn’t just have to be the top-level that gains, it can be your entire team.


Harness Data & Analytics With Teramind

Empowering your team to be more focused, decisive and productive is no easy task. Managers and team leads need clear metrics to manage their teams efficiently, but all of the data can be overwhelming. Teramind fills the missing gap in existing employee monitoring solutions by translating raw tracking data into meaningful metrics that can help you make data-driven decisions.

But don’t just take our word for it…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.