Your employees are your first line of defence when it comes to compliance with data protection laws. You might have robust policies and procedures in place, but if your staff do not understand their data protection responsibilities – or worse, are even aware of them – they become meaningless, and it puts your company at risk.
The Accountability Principle in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) makes it clear: organisations must demonstrate compliance, and that includes ensuring employees are properly trained.
Given the serious risks of non-compliance – hefty fines, reputational damage, and loss of customer trust – staff training is essential. Employee training empowers your team with the right knowledge, helps protect sensitive information, and safeguards your business.
Read on to find out more about data protection training – what it is, why it’s important and how Propelfwd can provide a specialised training programme to help protect your customer data.
What is data protection awareness?
As a responsible business owner, no doubt you conduct regular fire drills. It’s something you don’t question – it must be done to comply with health and safety regulations and keep your staff safe. The same accountability extends to data handling – you must ensure compliance with data protection legislation to protect your business, employees and customers.
Data protection awareness is just that: training your staff to understand the importance of handling sensitive information and their role in keeping it safe. It ensures everyone in your business understands their responsibilities under UK GDPR to protect personal data (such as names, addresses and bank details) from misuse, breaches, and cyber threats.
Awareness training is all about giving your staff the skills and knowledge to handle sensitive data and report mistakes with confidence, as it’s often hiding mistakes that cause big problems.
What is GDPR, Article 39?
As part of the UK’s data protection framework, organisations are required to appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO). Article 39 of the UK GDPR outlines the responsibilities of the DPO, which include training staff, providing guidance on data protection compliance requirements, and ensuring accountability.
Do I need GDPR training?
If the extent of your GDPR training involves sending out policies and expecting people to read them, you are putting your company at risk. Interactive GDPR training is engaging; it simplifies complex topics and enables staff to ask questions. It helps make GDPR principles easier to understand and apply in real life. Plus, the interactive element significantly enhances retention, ensuring that the principles stick.
A data protection course can be face-to-face or carried out by individuals online. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
Employees can complete online courses at their own pace, and you will have an instant record of training to demonstrate your accountability. Online modules can include a knowledge check or exam so you can ensure your staff’s understanding of the topic. Following the online session, employees can also access training materials for the rest of the year.
Although face-to-face courses may take employees away from their desks, they are engaging and interactive and boost knowledge retention. Although attendance records alone do not ensure understanding, interactive discussions can help people better understand the complex parts of GDPR.
We can create a course based on your requirements and deliver it to your staff. Once completed, your staff will receive a CPD certificate of achievement.
How do you train your staff on the GDPR?
Propelfwd offers training sessions that can be delivered face-to-face or online.
All of our courses are CPD Certified and updated regularly. We create bespoke, branded online courses for organisations with relevant data processing examples. Sometimes, we interview employees to get their opinions on data processing and include the interviews in the course.
Our face-to-face training is from Foundation to Practitioner to Data Protection Officer. These courses run twice a year in Jersey and once a year in Dublin, Ireland.
What should a data protection training programme include?
A data protection training course isn’t just about ticking boxes – it’s about creating a strong data protection culture to protect both your employees and customers.
It should cover all of the key principles of GDPR, including:
- Data protection basics – The key principles of GDPR, i.e., fairness, transparency, data minimisation, accuracy, security, and accountability.
- What happens if you get it wrong? – Explaining the real-world consequences of data breaches -fines, loss of trust, and reputational damage – helps make the training stick.
- Who does what? – Helping employees understand the different roles: data controllers, data processors, and the Data Protection Officer (DPO). Everyone has a part to play.
- Customer rights under GDPR – How employees must respond if a customer asks for their data to be deleted or wants to know what information you have on them.
- Spotting and handling subject access requests (SARs) – These can come in many forms, and missing one could land your organisation in trouble. Staff need to know how to recognise and deal with them.
- Recognising and reporting data breaches – Training should teach employees how to report issues quickly so the appropriate measures can be put in place.
- Everyday data security – Simple security habits such as strong passwords.
- Handling personal data correctly – Whether it’s customer details, employee records, or supplier information, staff should be clear on what they can and can’t do with personal data.
How long will data protection training take?
This varies; our initial online course should take each staff member about an hour to complete in a single sitting. An online annual refresher is 20-25 minutes. The face-to-face Foundation course is a one-day course, which takes eight hours. Our Practitioner course is two days, and our DPO course is four days.
How often should you do data protection training?
Data Protection Awareness training is an annual commitment. An initial data protection course should be provided for each data controller to explain the principles, rights and roles of data protection. For example, what a subject access request (SAR) is, what a data incident or breach is and how to report them to a manager.
Data governance evolves quickly, so it’s essential to stay on top of changes and provide refresher training every 12 months. In the interim, your DPO and other leaders should remain regularly updated and communicate important changes accordingly.
Data Protection Awareness training should be part of the induction training process for new employees. After successfully completing the courses, your staff will receive a CPD certificate for their training records and CPD hours for their continued professional development.
Why is it important for all staff to have GDPR training?
If your staff don’t know about data protection, how can you assure your customers that you are correctly looking after their data? The risks are not worth it. For example, a customer asks for a subject access request (SAR). Your employee doesn’t know what it is, ignores it and hides the fact. In 30 days’ time, your organisation will be in breach of data law, and you will no doubt be on the receiving end of an official complaint.
And any scrutiny from the Information Commissioner may not stop there – you could find that they become interested in other areas of accountability and GDPR compliance, such as security measures, third-party data processing agreements and staff training records.
Your staff are your front line and your defence against personal data breaches. GDPR training is essential to protect not only them but your customers and your organisation.
Benefits of data protection training course
There are a lot of benefits to making sure your staff are well-trained in data protection.
Here’s why it’s worth doing:
- It keeps you on the right side of the law – Data protection regulations aren’t optional: You must comply with data legislation to avoid fines, and that includes regular training.
- It protects your business from data breaches – Mistakes are the biggest cause of data breaches. Training helps staff avoid common errors that could lead to costly problems.
- It builds trust with your customers – People want to know their data is safe. Showing that you take data protection seriously strengthens customer relationships.
- It reduces risks and saves time – If staff know what they’re doing, they’ll make fewer mistakes, meaning less time spent fixing problems.
- It makes employees feel more confident – When your people know the right way to handle data, they’re less likely to worry about getting it wrong, which will add to their overall engagement and job satisfaction.
Why choose Propelfwd?
With years of hands-on experience across multiple jurisdictions, the Propelfwd team are experts in making data protection simple, practical, and relevant. Our online and in-person training courses break down the UK GDPR, EU GDPR, Data Protection Act, and evolving regulations into clear, real-world training that actually makes sense.
We design our courses for real people doing real jobs – whether your team handles personal data daily or comes into contact with customer information on occasion. Our training gives them the skills and confidence to protect data privacy, improve services, and demonstrate professionalism – all while keeping your company compliant.
Get in touch today
Contact the data protection experts at Propelfwd today and let’s discus your data protection training needs.
