Payroll is such an important part of any business and ensuring that it’s smooth-running is integral for accurate and efficient payments to employees. It’s also crucial that your company protects your employees’ data securely and that you have robust processes in place to manage this.

Information involved in payroll can be highly sensitive and if there are not efforts put in place by a company to protect it then it can put a company in breach of General Data Protection Regulations, which can lead to fines.

How can your company ensure it’s securing its employees’ personal data?

Central Point for Data

Ensure that you’re holding employee data in one place, instead of spread out across different systems and locations. Having a centralized system can help your payroll to interact with other elements of your business, so that data is managed properly and used in an efficient way.

Clearly segregate duties and tasks performed by employees that have access to data, so that inaccuracies are reduced and there are audit trails for people to check if there are anomalies. 

If there are only certain employees that have access in a centralised system then this can prevent being repeating work and limits the risk of errors when too many people are involved in the process. 

Limiting Access

If you keep access to your data to a limited pool of people then it reduces the risk of data breaches. You can decide this internally and tailor access, so that only the employees that need the data are able to view it. If data is on larger databases with lots of different people able to handle it then this increases chances of GDPR breaches which can be costly.

For the employees that can access data, make sure that they can only handle it via passwords and that all data is password protected with complex/robust protection in place, with numbers, special characters and a mix of upper- and lower-case characters used in passwords.

It’s integral that employees that can access data are also trained adequately and are up-to-date with the latest GDPR and privacy regulations. 

Secure 

When you outsource your payroll to an external provider, they will share data securely and safely and have systems in place to protect data. Encrypted secure communication will be used to enhance security. Reviews of processes can be carried out by them and internal audits can be performed so that GDPR regulations are adhered to. Data will be processed and handled correctly by payroll solution providers, as they are professionals who are experienced in UK Data Protection, GDPR and will keep info safe and secure.

It is incredibly important to keep employee payroll data safe and secure and being proactive about this means that the chances of costly data breaches can be avoided. For all of your payroll queries and needs, here at APS Global we’re vastly experienced in protecting and processing payroll data – get in touch for more details and more information about how we can help your business.