Role Based Privacy Training, it’s Basically Like Porridge

In simple terms, role-based training is about delivering the right content, to the right people, at the right time. It's about ensuring staff are given the correct information to do their jobs effectively, whether it's in the context of fulfilling a specific role or carrying out the responsibilities of a particular department. That could mean delivering relevant training on using a new software application, operating a piece of machinery or adapting training information when performing certain business operations, procedures, tasks and workflows.

Although most people appreciate that role-based training elicits high-quality outcomes for participants, it is helpful to understand how and why this is. You can then focus your training budget on implementing bespoke courses for maximum effect.

The key is finding the right balance. You don't want to deliver so much training that it results in an information overload or covers material that isn't relevant. On the other hand, it is equally important not to provide too little training that employees are left with knowledge gaps or uncertainty about what is expected of them. Instead, the aim is to deliver the correct amount of training for it to be informative, engaging and productive. Or as Goldilocks would say, just right.

Role-based training and data protection

In regards to privacy management and data protection compliance, this involves helping employees understand how and where specific organisational policies, laws and regulations impact their daily roles.

For example, if a department in your organisation is required to process sensitive personal data as defined under a specific set of special categories, which must be treated with extra protections and safeguads, that department would benefit enormously from bespoke training tailored to their specific requirements. Such training would concentrate on the lawfulness requirements under Article 6 of the UK General Data Protection Regulation along with the ten conditions for processing special category data as listed under Article 9, plus the additional conditions and safeguards set out in Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018.

Other staff and departments processing personal information, which does not include special categories of data, only require basic guidance on the provisions contained in the aforementioned Articles and Schedule.

Advantages of role-based privacy and data protection training

Some of the benefits of role-based training include:

1. Allocate privacy and data protection budget to ensure staff are trained on what they actually need to know to perform their job.
2. Achieve maximum coverage from your training budget when used in parallel with awareness level e-learning packages to fulfil task or role-specific elements as part of a long-term privacy culture training, learning, and development programme.
3. Create cross-departmental skills that complement each other and provide the ability for employees to collaborate in order to perform their duties accurately and increase productivity.
4. Identify candidates to become future privacy champions or technologists and potentially move into full-time privacy management roles. Considering the shortage of skilled privacy professionals, recruiting for privacy roles from within makes good business sense. These employees have the added advantage of already knowing the business and industry sector. Plus, it will save recruiting charges for specialist roles.
5. Consider coordinating role-based training with other business functions such as data governance and information security. Policies and procedures can be standardised, and costs can be reduced by sharing them across different parts of the organisation.
6. Personalised training helps ensure attendees remain engaged. We have all been in training sessions where we have fought to stay focused (or worse, awake) because what was being taught had nothing to do with our day-to-day tasks and responsibilities. Role-based training increases the likelihood attendees will invest emotionally, which in turn improves the chances they will remember and apply what they have learned.
7. Role-based training helps employees build the confidence they need to be successful in their job, especially at the beginning of their employment.

All of the above advantages are available, whether you have experienced privacy professionals to develop and deliver targeted role-based GDPR training in-house or if you need to bring in the services of a specialist data protection training provider. However, perhaps the most significant lasting benefit comes from the increased trust felt by consumers and service users that everyone in your organisation understands how to protect their personal information.

Wrapping up

In a world where processes are increasingly being digitalised, specific business roles are as distinctive as the skill-sets required to perform them. Therefore, to ensure you receive the best value for your privacy and data protection budget, role-based training that’s created ‘just right’ for your organisation and staff is one of the best choices you can make.

We have previously written about what GDPR training is and how to conduct GDPR training. Both these articles refer to role-based training.

To find out more about data protection and privacy management training, email contact@freevacy.com or call our team on 0370 04 27701 today.