Attend a POPI workshop to raise your awareness about the protection of personal information, help you to know the impact on your organisation and find out how to comply and implement the POPI Act in your organisation in a practical and effective way.

Who does POPI (POPIA) affect?

If your organisation processes personal information, complying with the POPI Act within the assigned year is very much your problem. You need to comply with POPI or you’ll face significant consequences.

POPI particularly affects the financial services, healthcare and marketing sectors as well as large and medium-sized organisations, manufacturers, non-profit organisations, and schools.

Start with a POPI workshop

We understand that you’ll want to take practical and effective action that achieves the best results at the lowest costs. And we also understand that the POPI Act is a difficult law to apply to because it deals with intangible concepts.

So as experts in this area, we believe that the best way for you to start this journey is by attending a POPI workshop to raise awareness and plan your next steps.

We offer practical legal training in three formats:

Public POPI Workshops

Public workshops held in-person or online can be attended by everyone. The number of delegates admitted is limited so bookings are made on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Private POPI Workshops

Private in-house workshops are tailored to your needs, can be held in-person on your premises or online, and on a day that suits you. For an unlimited number of delegates, provided your training venue has enough seating.

Executive POPI Briefing

Executive briefings are accurate, high-level views on a topic. These briefings can are held in-house or online.

Key outcomes:

  1. Raise your awareness around POPIA.
  2. Know the impact on your organisation.
  3. Learn how to take practical and effective action.

This means that by the end of the workshop you’ll:

  • Get up-to-speed quickly and be up-to-date with the latest developments by accessing deep knowledge, expertise and experience.
  • Save time by having an expert guide and coach you through these complex laws.
  • Know the impact on your organisation by doing an impact assessment on your organisation.
  • Know what practical action to take by identifying some quick wins and actions to take first.
  • Find out how to implement data protection in your organisation by gaining key insights into the process.
  • Identify your next steps by exploring the available options

We offer tailored private events that can be held at your premises or online on a day that suits you.

Contact us to discuss your requirements and we will provide you with a proposal to meet your needs.

The POPI workshop is broken down into nine sessions. We tailor what we cover for each specific event and for the actual attendees of each event.

  • Hello and welcome
  • Introduction
  • Learn to increase awareness
  • Planning successful programmes
  • Protecting personal data – implementing effective and successful POPI projects and programmes.
  • Sustaining compliance
  • Open floor
  • What next?

Please email us and ask for the POPI Workshop Agenda if you would like details. This is not an academic workshop for students. It is for people dealing with these issues in their organisations

When it comes to implementing the POPI Act people and organisations often struggle with identifying where to start. What we’ve realised is that:

  • some organisations want to comply themselves (for example, by attending one of our workshops described on this page),
  • others want to comply with our guidance by joining a Michalsons programme, and
  • others want us to do what needs to be done to comply for them by asking us to quote on specific actions.

We want you to get value out of the investments (both time and money) you make in training. So we’ve designed a questionnaire that will help us to help you identify the course of action best suited to your organisation. We take into account the potential impact of these laws on your organisation while factoring in your budget and the resources available to you. So,

before booking POPI training: please complete our impact assessment questionnaire. It will take you about 4 minutes and there is no charge to you, and we’ll get back to you with suggestions of a way forward so that you can make an informed choice.

We will provide attendees with:

  • a POPI Key Insights handout and 45-minute video,
  • an electronic copy of our comprehensive presentation covering the POPI Act,
  • access to an electronic version of POPIA in the form of a website,
  • a POPI word cloud to get an overview of the law,
  • our POPI Mapper – a tool to map activities,
  • an Activity Map template you can use to record the mapping of your activities,
  • a list of Quick Wins so that the session translates into practical action, and
  • an audio recording of the event (private sessions only).

Your main motivation for complying with the POPI Act should be to protect people from harm. However if you don’t comply you may also:

  • Suffer reputational damage
  • Lose customers and fail to attract new ones
  • Pay out millions in damages to a civil class action
  • Be fined up to R10 million or face up to 10 years in jail

This is serious, you need to take action now. You can also get business value out of complying with the POPI Act – there is a strong business case.

This POPI Workshop is for the person (or team) who is responsible for ensuring that the organisation complies with the POPI Act. For example, this might be the legal adviser, compliance office, information officer or data protection officer.

This POPI Workshop is also for managers, leaders, and decision-makers who plan and implement controls to protect personal data. Sometimes called data protection champions. This includes marketing managers, compliance officers, IT managers and IT operators, IT security officers and IT governance officers, HR and payroll managers, or auditors.

Any organisation that processes a lot of personal data. This could be an organisation in the public or private sector (like a bank or a medical aid). The industries that are most affected are financial services, healthcare and marketing. Banks, retailers, credit providers, insurance companies, medical aid companies, hospitals, direct marketers, business process outsources and telcos are some of the organisations on which data protection law has a high impact. The essence of some organisations is the processing of personal information – the impact on them is huge.

  • Years of practical experience in data protection.
  • Interactive sessions where you’re able to ask questions and discuss your specific issues.
  • We provide insight and simplify issues, which can only be done after practically applying POPI to real business issues.
  • We empower you and do not try to entrench ourselves in your organisation.
  • We cover a lot in a single day, saving you time and money.

We have a pool of experienced and practical presenters, including:

  • attorneys from Michalsons, for example John Giles is a trusted independent professional legal adviser, who is a practising attorney.
  • international lawyers from the Lexing Network, for example Frederic Foster from France, Raffaele Zallone from Italy or Marc Gallardo from Spain,
  • representatives from regulators or authorities, or
  • data protection officers or information officers from organisations.

We will ensure the presenters are the best people to present the course depending on the type of course, the date, the specific issues and the attendees. Sometimes, there will be one presenter, others multiple speakers. Our presenters are currently helping many people understand the practical impact of data protection regulations on their organisations. They help them to comply with data protection law and implement effective privacy projects and programmes. They have also presented many times on the topic to thousands of people. They have years of practical experience applying their knowledge to organisations to help them grow and avoid legal problems, difficulties, and disputes.

We provide a POPI workshop, POPI conference or POPI webinar in different formats. Public and private sessions can last for anything from 45 minutes, half a day, a full day or two days. We also provide eCourses that can be done via the Internet at your convenience. We welcome enquiries for more information and details.

Our public events are at various venues around the world or online. We choose physical venues that are central and easy to get to, that have adequate parking, good food, and that ensure you are comfortable. We are also happy to give a private workshop or executive briefing at your venue. We use a variety of online meeting tools.

Feedback from the delegates about the POPI workshop

I like the practical approach to the problem of compliance. In fact this is the first course that I have attended which actually shared a practical approach.

Head of Legal

This is the first time that I have attended a regulatory training course that had truly practical elements to it. It was very beneficial and I feel I took away a lot of valuable ”action items”

Information Officer

Having been to many presentations I have to congratulate the presenters for the focus of the material and for holding the interest of the audience at all times. As one that had not been exposed to the POPI Act very much this encapsulated the bill and was presented in an understandable way. I was impressed that something this difficult was made clearer for me.

Head of Compliance

The workshop offered a practical, holistic approach on the subject of POPI compared to other workshops which are mostly just approaching the topic from a marketing perspective.

Presents digested information, saving me hours and enabling execution

I thought the seminar was very interesting and the information was presented very well by John Giles

Ubiquitech (Pty) Ltd

Watch this short video about the POPI Act workshop

In this 2 minute video John Giles (the managing attorney at Michalsons) talks about the Michalsons POPI workshop and explains what they entail.