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Skillrung

HR, legal and finance

Digital skills courses for HR managers: personnel files, payroll and recruitment

In brief

A human resources department holds the most sensitive material a company has: contracts, payslips, bank details, sick leave certificates, job applications, sometimes elements of health or trade union membership. It is also the target of one precise fraud, the fake change of an employee's bank details just before payroll. Skillrung courses for HR managers start from those files, that calendar and those requests.

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The HR department concentrates the company's most protected data

No other department brings together so many categories of data at once. An employee's file holds their identity, their address, their family situation, their pay and their bank details. To that are added elements whose processing is prohibited in principle and possible only in exhaustively listed cases: sick leave certificates, occupational health opinions, recognition as a disabled worker, trade union membership. The courses handle this material without turning the HR department into a legal department: which information is necessary at each stage, which is never asked of a candidate, where anything relating to health is filed.

The fake change of an employee's bank details

The scenario has become commonplace and it aims specifically at human resources. A few days before payroll closes, a message arrives from an address resembling an employee's, asking for their bank details to be changed. The tone is ordinary, the request unremarkable, and the time window makes checking uncomfortable. If the change goes through, the salary leaves for somewhere else and the company pays twice. The courses install a procedure that costs two minutes: every change is confirmed through a channel other than the message received, never by replying to it.

A joiner and a leaver are first of all movements of access

Human resources trigger the creation of accounts and ought to trigger their closure. In practice, opening them is always done because it blocks the work otherwise, and closing them is often forgotten because it does not. Months after someone has left, access to the mailbox, to a shared space or to a service paid for by the company is still active. The courses turn that movement into an explicit process: a list of access rights per post kept with the managers, a closure on the day of departure rather than at the end of the notice period, and equipment returned with its access wiped.

Recruitment, artificial intelligence and the limits of monitoring

Two uses call for particular care on the HR side. The automated sorting of applications first: AI systems intended for recruitment and for the management of workers are among those the European regulation classifies as high risk, which rules out relying on a score with no real human involvement. Monitoring second: activity measurement, access control, logging. The principle that governs the whole subject: no system may collect information about an employee without having been brought to their attention beforehand, and the staff representative bodies have to be informed.

Sources

What the official text says

Every figure or legal statement on this page points to its primary source, with its date. We publish no figure without a verifiable source.

Frequently asked questions

What HR managers ask us

Can I keep the applications of people who were not selected?

Yes, for a limited period, defined in advance and brought to the candidate's attention, with the possibility for them to ask for deletion. What is not acceptable is keeping a CV database indefinitely “just in case” when nobody consults it any more. The GDPR course explains how to set that period and how to apply it.

An employee is asking by message to change their bank details: what do I do?

Change nothing on the strength of the message alone, even if it appears to come from them. Call them on the number in their file, or have the request confirmed in person. It is the only check that holds, because it goes through another channel. This rule has to be written down and known to everyone who touches payroll.

What should be done with sick leave certificates received by email?

Treat them as health data: access restricted to the only people who need it, filing in a space separate from the department's shared folder, and deletion of the message and its attachment once the document has been filed. Neither the mailbox nor a common folder is an acceptable place to keep these documents.

Can I use an AI tool to sort applications?

These uses fall within a category framed by the European artificial intelligence regulation, with requirements of its own. In practice the decision has to remain human and reasoned, candidates have to be informed, and the way the tool works has to be understood before it is adopted. The generative AI course sets those markers and separates what is reasonable from what is not.

What happens to the access rights of an employee who leaves?

They are closed on the day of actual departure, all of them, including the online services subscribed to for one project and the work phone. A list of access rights per post, kept up with the managers, turns that step into a five-minute formality instead of an investigation carried out six months later when a forgotten account causes trouble.

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The first four slides of every course are free, with no account and no bank card. From the fifth onwards, a subscription is required.

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