Welcome to the 2nd post in our ‘GDPR HR Issues’ blog series. Drawing on key insights from across Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner’s global Employment & Labor team, the series highlights key GDPR issues affecting employers.

With the General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’) coming into effect today, employers with EU-based staff need to ensure that they properly comply with the new regime. Failure to do so can result in significant fines and disruption to your business.

This blog focuses on the changes made by GDPR to a fundamental data protection right – an employee’s right to find out what information their employer holds on them by making a data subject access request (‘DSAR’).

Following the combination of the Labor & Employment practices at Bryan Cave and BLP, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner’s combined team now includes over 120 employment lawyers in offices across the US, UK, France, Germany and Russia, with excellent capabilities and a strong network in Asia. Committed to collaboration, and with our strengthened offering, experience and substantive knowledge advising clients on GDPR, we bring you our new ‘GDPR HR Issues’  blog series. Drawing on key insights from across our team, the series highlights the key GDPR issues affecting employers.

The General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’) comes into force in less than two months. From an HR perspective it imposes data obligations on any US, European or other employer with EU-based staff. Failure to comply with the GDPR regime can result in significant fines and disruption to your business. Are you ready?

Our first blog deals with ‘privacy notices’ aimed at staff.

On September 25, 2017, the French government adopted orders to reform French employment law, designed to bring more flexibility to employers, in particular to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to facilitate their functioning. We will be presenting in the upcoming weeks various measures introduced by these reforms.

One of the reforms concerns provisions to encourage employers to work from home, commonly referred to in France as “telework” (télétravail).

Telework may be implemented via a company collective agreement or policy, after consultation with personnel representatives. The collective agreement or policy outlines the conditions for telework, including conditions for terminating telework. An amendment to the employee’s employment agreement is no longer required. Instead, the employer and employee can agree by a simple email exchange. This, however, should be specified in the collective agreement or policy. An email exchange is also sufficient for occasional telework.

Any employer who refuses to grant the employee