May 25th 2018
It came
And it went
And the world didn’t end!
So why are we talking about the GDPR now when the law came into effect over 2 years ago?
The reality of the situation is that once the initial panic ran out of steam, businesses realised that nobody was going to be knocking on their door to demand to see what they have done about meeting their new legal requirements.
In the franchise world the level of confusion leading to non-activity is ramped up a little.
As legal entities, franchisees are responsible for meeting, managing and evidencing exactly what they have done and are doing to meet their legal obligations. In fact, isn’t this the attraction of becoming a franchisee in the first place?
It’s fair to say that a lot of franchisees assume that data protection is all sorted by the franchisor.
Some parts are – but a privacy policy given to you by your franchisor does not a data protection safety bubble make!
What about Franchisors?
Changes in data protection law mean that you now need to be concerned with what ALL of your franchisees are doing to meet their legal requirements with data protection.
‘But it’s none of my business!’ I hear you cry.
Technically you may be correct but think about this
Whose brand will be in the local paper if your franchisee is not doing what they are supposed to be doing?
So I guess you have a choice – you can shout the oft used line of ‘ it’s the franchisees responsibility’ and hope that nothing bad happens OR you can help, you can manage, you can use your pro-active stance on data protection as a badge of honour .
Isn’t this the reason your franchisee chose you in the first place?