Fulfilling employee DSARs looks like an eDiscovery workflow. Exterro discusses treating them as complex discovery exercises here!
The article from Fahad Diwan, JD, FIP, CIPP/M, CIPP/C, Director of Product Marketing, Data Governance, Exterro (Fulfilling Employee DSARs Actually Looks a Lot Like an eDiscovery Workflow, available here) discusses how the key to mastering employee Data Subject Access Requests (DSARs) is recognizing that they are not routine administrative tasks, but complex eDiscovery exercises.
The Fallacy of the “Consumer Privacy” Mindset
Treating employees like external consumers represents one of the largest operational blind spots in modern compliance. While a consumer request typically draws from structured databases like CRMs, transaction logs, and billing systems, an employee’s digital footprint consists almost entirely of unstructured Electronically Stored Information (ESI).
- Data Volume and Sprawl: An employee generates data continuously across email archives, Slack, Microsoft Teams, internal HRIS platforms, and local drives. Sifting through years of chat threads and documents requires deep search analytics rather than basic database scripts.
- High-Stakes Motives: Consumer DSARs are often driven by privacy curiosity or automated opt-out services. Employee DSARs, however, are frequently submitted by disgruntled or former workers during severances, internal grievances, or employment disputes as a tactic for pre-litigation discovery.
- The “Mixed Data” Challenge: Corporate communications rarely exist in isolation. A single email thread containing the requester’s name likely contains confidential business discussions and the personal data of colleagues, requiring line-by-line review to protect third-party privacy.
So, how can you map DSAR fulfillment to the EDRM framework? How can you navigate exemptions, legal holds, and retaliatory risk? And how can you transform the process with purpose-built technology? Find out here, it’s only one click. Consider the click an “access request”! 😉
If you want to learn more expert insights into managing employee DSARs, download the recent Exterro whitepaper, Managing Employee DSARs: Lessons Learned under GDPR, CCPA, and CPRA.
So, what do you think? How does your organization manage employee DSARs? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.
Image created using ChatGPT, using the term “robot IT person handing over several hard drives of data to an overwhelmed robot employee”.
Disclosure: Exterro is an Educational Partner and sponsor of eDiscovery Today
Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.