Managing Global HR Privacy Challenges

This one-day course is a comprehensive, in-depth workshop on HR data privacy issues facing multi-national employers, both internationally and at home. It is designed to provide practitioners with the background, framework, and practical insights needed to successfully address the growing legal and regulatory challenges surrounding the use of employee personal information.

Who Gains the Most from Attending

HR and HR systems professionals in multi-national companies will benefit the most from this course. Those performing the same functions in more domestically-oriented organizations have also found this workshop to be of real value, since privacy developments in the U.S. are illuminated and influenced by those in Europe and Canada.

Course Overview

Topics addressed in this workshop include:

1. Three paradigm shifts concerning employee data; definition and types of privacy, including its relationship to security and confidentiality; the top ten workplace privacy challenges; and legal protections for privacy in the U.S., Europe, Canada, and elsewhere.
2. The challenge of the EU Privacy Directive; enforcement potential and realities; six compliance options for transferring HR data to the U.S., including Safe Harbor, model contracts, and binding corporate rules; and trade-offs in evaluating the options.
3. Decision points and choices for multi-nationals, and how three leading U.S.-based multi-nationals have created privacy programs to meet international regulatory challenges.
4. The key role of the principles of fair information practice; a model for addressing privacy challenges; HR codes of practice; and employee privacy policies.
5. Building privacy into HR systems and practices; Privacy Impact Assessments; a group exercise on a proposed HR portal; ID theft and data breach notification aws; monitoring employee communications and computer use; information security; whistleblowing and Sarbanes-Oxley; and offshore outsourcing.
6. Online resources relating to HR privacy issues.

Attendees come away from this information-rich workshop with:

1. A thorough understanding of the nature and regulatory context of employee privacy challenges.
2. Exposure to leading-edge, best-practice approaches for addressing these challenges.
3. The working knowledge, methodology, and insights needed to guide project teams and organizations through the dynamic and evolving privacy landscape.

Teaching methodology: Mix of lecture, discussion, and group exercise.

About the Instructor

Dr. Donald Harris is President of HR Privacy Solutions, a New York-based consulting practice that has assisted more twenty leading multi-national companies in addressing global privacy challenges. He is an internationally known expert, speaker, author and conference producer on HR data privacy issues. Don advised the U.S. Dept. of Commerce on HR issues involved in Safe Harbor, and led several industry consortia projects interacting with European regulators, including one that developed a model contract for HR data transfers from Germany and another that influenced the UK code of practice for employers.

Founder and chair of the Privacy Committee of IHRIM, he is now Privacy Advisor to its Privacy & Security SIG. In recognition of his contributions in the area of employee data privacy, IHRIM honored him with a Special Achievement Award in 2000 and its highest honor, the Summit Award, in 2003. Prior to establishing his own consulting practice in 1999, Don managed HR systems and information, and developed privacy policies, for major private and public sector organizations, during a 25-year career in HR, payroll and labor relations.

Over the past five years, Dr. Harris has delivered this workshop over 25 times in U.S. cities across the country, as well as in Toronto and Winnipeg.