Effective 1 July 2021, the Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Act applies to anybody who owns a business in South Africa and is recording personal information about a client.
There is still plenty of time for you to sort out the POPI requirements for your business and Professional Beauty can help you get through this.
There are lots of companies and individuals out there claiming to be experts in POPI Act compliance who will, for a considerable sum of money, help you to become compliant.
Pause before engaging them and attend the POPI Act Webinar on Monday, 5th July organised by Professional Beauty. We had a similar situation way back in 1999, with the Y2K problem (i.e. the Millennium bug) regarding issues related to computer calendar data and then again last year over COVID-19 compliance, when salons were able to open up again.
The Professional Beauty webinar will attempt to answer all your questions and help guide you through some of the steps to POPI compliance. We will be joined by Karl Markwald, director at ESP, and Samantha Lockhart, owner of Myspa Consultants. Our two panellists will be aiming to demystify the POPI Act by making it understandable in practical terms, allowing for business owners to create a protocol. POPI compliance is not so simple for our industry, as we are dealing with loyalty vouchers, courses and sessions.
We will be looking at how you got the data in the first place, what questions you asked, and what policies you have in place to manage that data. In addition, we will look at issues such as what you use the data for, how the data is stored, how old the data is and when you last contacted all the names on your database.
Says Karl Markwald: “Clients won't want you to delete their data and write off what is owing to them if they are on a subscription or loyalty programme of some kind. Most importantly, there is no need to panic or to pay anyone to achieve compliance because policing has to start first, so there is time. POPI compliance needs to be a steady, calm process but most importantly, staff need to be trained as that is the weak point in the equation. We have to get staff to think of client data in the same way as R200 notes – i.e. don’t leave them lying around.”
Samantha Lockhart adds: “As a consultant who is trusted by many spa and salon owners in the industry, my main aim is to assist the business owners by equipping them with knowledge. We all know that knowledge is power. How we yield that power will determine how successful we are at navigating this unknown terrain. This is a detailed and lengthy act, which we can navigate safely together.”
Important factors to consider implementing as soon as possible as required by the act are to send out a friendly ‘continue to opt in’ message or email, set up your privacy policy and data processing tools on your website, create correct documentation for new protocols and training on these, and work out how to store and process your clients’ data correctly.
“I look forward to sharing our views with other panellists and to empower the owners to feel safe in their use of their clients’ data,” adds Markwald.
Please click HERE to register for this great webinar