‘3 minutes with’ is You Do Better PR’s initiative to support positive communications, gain an insight into local businesses, learn from their experience and take away their top tips. This month they hear from member Gary O’Reilly, Privacy Law Solicitor and Owner of SME Comply, a specialist data protection and compliance consultancy, providing small to medium enterprises (SMEs) with a range of essential legal, governance and data protection solutions, as well as consultancy and Data Protection Officer services. Gary says:
“1. Plan your time effectively (especially if you are home schooling).
If you are like me, self-employed with two young children requiring home schooling, then each lockdown is all about managing your time effectively. At the start it was a complete shock to the system, but now I have a routine, which usually means doing some of my work early in the morning (you will get me on email from 05.30am) before the school day starts with classroom Zoom and Hangout meetings. Then continuing to work when I can throughout the day and evening. I feel that we need to accept that these measures may be in place for some time to come.
- If you have children talk to them.
Spending time with my family over the past year has been great, however it is scary when you realise just how vulnerable we are. I always make time to ask my children (9 and 6) how they are feeling about everything. My six year old daughter in particular found it hard to take in – masks and having to sanitize. She had trouble sleeping for the first month of the first lockdown thinking the virus was ‘going to get her’.
- Adapt – Try to play the situation to your business advantage.
There was little point in stressing over something I could not change, and instead I thought of how I could play it to my advantage. I remember reading an article during the first lockdown about how businesses should use the time wisely, to re-evaluate their marketing and communications strategy in readiness for the end of lockdown, and that is exactly what I did.
Lockdown made me realise just how interconnected we all are. With the help of technology I realised that I could offer some of my services outside of the UK and set about marketing to a wider audience, namely Ireland. After all, the GDPR is an EU regulation, which means it had to be implemented in the same way in all EU countries, and so I began offering a remote data protection service to a wider market.
What a lot of people don’t realise is that although we have left the EU, the GDPR is still applicable to any UK company that continue to sell to EU customers. A trade deal was eventually reached, and one aspect of that deal was that personal data could continue to flow between the UK and EU for the next 6 months, or until an adequacy decision has been made by the EU.
What this does not mean however is that other parts of the GDPR are also not applicable for the next 6 months. For example, if a business continues to sell to the EU, or monitors the behaviour of EU data subjects (such as behavioural advertising or placing cookies on EU website visitors for example), and they do not have an EU ‘establishment’ (office, branch etc.) then they most likely need to appoint an EU Representative now so that data subjects and supervising authorities in the EU have a point of contact for UK companies in the EU. This is an initiative I pursued during lockdown and this is a service I can now offer via my Ireland (EU) office.”
To join in with You Do Better PR’s ‘3 minutes with initiative’, please email: [email protected].