It's been an interesting few months for us which has been consumed by something called GDPR. We've been "working" on this for a while, making sure we are compliant and certain that everything we need to do is dealt with by the May 25th deadline. We spend hours, no days, working through an Impact Assessment and whilst it appeared to be an insurmountable task, it was in fact a good exercise . Revisiting processes and procedures relating to all things "data" was quite therapeutic. Considering the way we all work has changed so much over the last 20 years, it was good to take stock of email etiquette, telephone protocol, how we secure and protect data. When the impact assessment was finished, compiled after writing work flows on 30 sheets of flip chart paper, we decided it might be useful to give the Impact Assessment to GLM members and all letting agents attending our courses.
We tailored the Impact Assessment specifically for the Lettings, property management and sales processes. We mapped every single element of data collection, data use, data protection and deletion then along with privacy policies and up to date GDPR compliant documents, gave it to our clients.
We are known for being customer focused. We ensure that our clients are taken care of but the reaction to what we did was quite overwhelming and sometimes amusing- messages of thanks and gratitude flowed in; clients who were panicking felt relieved and prepared; we have received cakes, cookies, flowers, chocolates and thank you cards. We've had more new Guild members in the last quarter than ever before because of the work we have done.
Our focus was not really GDPR, it was finding a way to ease the burden for our clients and it worked. And we are so glad we did it.