diff --git a/docs/release-notes/version-2.8.md b/docs/release-notes/version-2.8.md
index 5b73cc85d..8f95141ca 100644
--- a/docs/release-notes/version-2.8.md
+++ b/docs/release-notes/version-2.8.md
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@
 ### Bug Fixes
 
 * [#4527](https://github.com/netbox-community/netbox/issues/4527) - Fix assignment of certain tags to config contexts
+* [#4549](https://github.com/netbox-community/netbox/issues/4549) - Fix encoding unicode webhook body data
 
 ---
 
diff --git a/netbox/extras/webhooks.py b/netbox/extras/webhooks.py
index fdf69d6d5..8a7a07560 100644
--- a/netbox/extras/webhooks.py
+++ b/netbox/extras/webhooks.py
@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ def generate_signature(request_body, secret):
     """
     hmac_prep = hmac.new(
         key=secret.encode('utf8'),
-        msg=request_body.encode('utf8'),
+        msg=request_body,
         digestmod=hashlib.sha512
     )
     return hmac_prep.hexdigest()
diff --git a/netbox/extras/webhooks_worker.py b/netbox/extras/webhooks_worker.py
index 1b1b76dd9..15913c899 100644
--- a/netbox/extras/webhooks_worker.py
+++ b/netbox/extras/webhooks_worker.py
@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ def process_webhook(webhook, data, model_name, event, timestamp, username, reque
         'method': webhook.http_method,
         'url': webhook.payload_url,
         'headers': headers,
-        'data': body,
+        'data': body.encode('utf8'),
     }
     logger.info(
         "Sending {} request to {} ({} {})".format(