Team size: Four

Can you give an idea of the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

The Nordic Data Protection Team have taken on the task of not only being legal experts but also “GDPR evangelists”. Through hours of legal research and discussions, the team have taken the core essences of data protection regulation and transformed them from abstract letters in a legal text to daily routines that bring the regulation to life in the business. Besides building deep legal knowledge and competence, we have gone the extra mile to convert the legal text and apply it to the business needs, making the basic GDPR housekeeping easily accessible, and raising awareness across the entire organisation.

Covering all basic building blocks in the GDPR arena, we have created a strong governance model with GDPR Risk Assessment as its cornerstone and a solid foundation with a detailed business process map displaying the areas of data processing. In both cases, the team have partnered with the business and process owners to help create the basis for the work on protecting personal data and documenting compliance.

The Nordic Data Protection team supports the business needs of a company with delivery of hardware, software and hosted it-solutions. Team members work closely with business developers to support data protection by design and default in the early phases of product design and development as well as supporting the launch. This partnership is possible because of the excellent business understanding in the team and close collaboration with the business.

Translating the legal requirements into daily work is an ongoing process and not a one-off event. The ongoing translation and awareness training is supported by internal audits and checks, giving the us feedback on the current state of awareness and suggestions for improvement in communication and training, making a learning loop possible.

Do you have an example of a time when you have come up with an innovation that improved how your legal team functions, while avoiding any large expense?

Taking contract management to the next level is often discussed in companies. Several professional contract management systems exist and offer an easy path to the next level. Having had the discussion on contract management for a while, we looked at different opportunities.

The process led to a simple but innovative solution supporting contract management and taking this to the next level. The solution gave a very basic approach to storing contracts, offering access to the right roles in the company and optimising the contract management process by utilising the company’s existing IT tools and not adding costs.

How has the increasing consciousness of climate change and sustainability affected your company and the team’s priorities?

Konica Minolta takes issues on climate change and sustainability seriously. The company have for many years, adhered to the UN Global Compact, reporting on progress made year after year. The legal team supports the reporting on these topics and responds to customer requests on said topics.

How has your legal team progressed on issues of diversity and inclusion (D&I), and what are the main benefits or challenges of working in a diverse environment?

Our people thrive in an environment built on strong collaboration, continuous learning, and personal growth. Every day at Konica Minolta is an opportunity to share our ideas, influence change and engage with colleagues from diverse backgrounds and experiences. Therefore, Konica Minolta wants to be a place of tolerance, openness, and mutual understanding.

We are committed to supporting diversity and inclusion within Konica Minolta and the society, while maintaining an inclusive environment with equitable treatment. We strive to eliminate discrimination within our workforce. Therefore, we continuously analyse our work environment to ensure that diversity and inclusion flourish. We are implementing further measures to support this, by introducing a DE&I (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) officer.