The survey, conducted by ADP Research Institute, found that over half of the respondents (53%) said that their confidence has risen in the way their employer stores and secures their personal and private data. The figure is an increase of 6% on 2018’s results.
The ADP Workforce View in Europe 2019 took in the views of over 10,000 workers in Europe, in countries including France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK.
It reported that employees generally have been feeling more positive about their companies’ data protection efforts since the GDPR came into being on May 25th of last year.
However, over a quarter of respondents (26%) in Britain still have concerns about how safe their personal data is. This number climbed to over a third of employees (34%) in France. The finding suggests that organisations still have plenty of work to do to demonstrate and reassure staff that data privacy matters are being taken seriously.
In the UK, the biggest worry concerned the lack of control that workers have over their data storage (11%). The next key issue, reported by 9% of respondents, related to a lack of confidence in the ability of IT systems to withstand cyber attacks and data breaches. Data being held without proper consent was top-of-mind for 8% of those surveyed.
ADP’s Chief Privacy Officer, Cécile Georges, said:
“It’s highly encouraging to see that the implementation of GDPR has coincided with a significant rise in employee confidence, suggesting that employees feel more assured than they were prior to GDPR that companies will actually comply with Data Protection requirements that for the most part were already in force in the European Union.
“It is crucial for both the organisations and their employees that the former are complying with GDPR and have a thorough understanding of the impact of wrongfully processing data on employees,” she added.
“GDPR has already led to positive results but companies must continue to work to maintain data security and ensure their employees feel confident about the way their employers hold and process their personal data,” Georges continued.
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