How to respond to the company requesting information such as sexual orientation and preferred pronoun?

Question

Context

• UK company operating in multiple European countries and I am working in one of the East European countries.
• recently changed the HR system, now having a focused more on the "social media" side than on the HR functional side

Following the system changed, our local HR partner asked us to fill/fix the information following the data migration. I did that and noticed a section called Diversity which contains Pronouns, Nationality, Gender identity, Ethnicity, Sexual Orientation, Legal sex. I filled only a couple of fields (nothing is mandatory except the Legal sex which was migrated anyway and coupled with the National ID).

The issue

After several weeks, the CPO sent an e-mail (using the HR platform) requesting our assistance in filling the diversity data for "diversity reporting" reasons. This is not the first time I see such fields, but I always had the option to select "prefer not say" or similar so far (the platform has a predefined list of values for each field).

Note: the e-mail looks like it was directly sent from the CPO to me via the platform and I assume that it was sent only to the employees who did not fill this data.

My rationale for not answering some of these questions is that I believe that some of them are private matters, not a company concern.

What is the appropriate answer in this case? I see the following options:

• do nothing: there is a chance my manager will get pinged about the lack of data
• discuss with my manager: his answer in this case will most likely be - just answer those to avoid any unpleasant discussions, we don't really care about those anyway in our work

I am inclined to take the first approach, but I am not sure.

I have found this similar question, but it seem to address only the specific case of the sexual orientation and colleague-to-colleague relationship, not company-to-employee relationship. Most of the answers suggest that asking for this type of information is inappropriate in most contexts.

Answer 1

I would simply ignore a general bulk email asking people to add the data - you've already filled in what you're comfortable with, so leave it at that.

If someone comes to you directly or you keep getting chaser emails, then respond with something along the lines of:

This is not information that I feel comfortable sharing, and there was no "prefer not to say" option on the form, so I just left those fields blank.

And then leave the ball in their court. If they decide to add in a "prefer not to say" option then you can use that; if not then just leave things as they are.

But if they try and demand that you fill in this data then make it clear (in writing) that you do not consent for them to gather or store this data on you, and get your union involved. This is a bit of a legal minefield from a data protection perspective, so I suspect they would not want to go down that route.

Answer 2

Without trying to invalidate any of your privacy concerns, the reality of the fact is that if someone (either the company, or the government) implements diversity protections to ensure that a workforce is reasonably diversified across its populace, it cannot confirm appropriate diversity without confirming the diversity criteria of the employees themselves.

I would address your concerns with your employer, but not from a place of taking offense by them asking. I doubt there is any malice in the current request, it's merely a box-ticking exercise in order to be able to report on the diversity in the workforce. Rather, I would address the inability to opt out of this kind of data gathering and expressing a preference for privacy over inclusion in diversity statistics.

You've not really mentioned anything on your company's behalf other than them sending out automated emails, so I see no reason to assume that you're not able to pick up this conversation with your manager or that they would respond unreasonably.

It's up to you to decide what you're comfortable with, e.g. depending on the anonymity of the survey etc. The fact that it was optional in the form to begin with suggests that the company isn't particularly forcing your hand here, someone probably just got a bit too eager looking at survey completion figures.

Answer 3

They need to inform you about the purpose.
They need your permission to get Ethnicity and Sexual Orientation.
Worst case: Filling a field could be considered you giving your permission. (I don't know how it should be)

About personal data in UK:
Personal data an employer can keep about an employee

Employers need their employees’ permission to keep certain types of ’sensitive’ data, including:

race and ethnicity
religion
political membership or opinions
...
health and medical conditions
sexual history or orientation

Employers must keep sensitive data more securely than other types of data.

The Data Protection Act

Everyone responsible for using personal data has to follow strict rules called ‘data protection principles’. They must make sure the information is:

used fairly, lawfully and transparently
used for specified, explicit purposes
...

Answer 4

The answer may depend on where you are.

In the US, asking preferred pronoun is simply polite these days, and asking sexual orientation usually means the company is trying to meet fair employment goals, so answering these questions is usually harmless and may be helpful.

On the other hand, if you aren't comfortable answering, you aren't required to answer. The worst that is likely to happen is that, because you're forcing them to guess, they call you by a pronoun you don't like.

There are very few us companies which still actively discriminate on the basis of either of these, and generally, if you are asking this question, you wouldn't want to work for those anyway.

Elsewhere in the world, of course, things may be much messier. I have no idea what is and isn't expected in the UK. I would still assume that the request is benign, but make your own judgments.

Answer 5

I have worked in organisations that asked similar questions of employees. As mentioned in other answers, one of the reasons for asking such questions is to inform the organisation's diversity efforts.

For instance, when I was involved in recruiting, there was an option for candidates to flag whether they had a disability (separate from the option to request accommodations during the interview process).

By checking the numbers for each stage of the process, we could get an idea for whether our process was functioning fairly. For instance, if we had seen that disabled candidates were less likely to make it through the interview process than non-disabled candidates, we might have wanted to look more closely at how we were running interviews to make sure there weren't any accessibility problems there.

Another reason why employers may encourage people to provide this data is that the percentage of employees willing to disclose this information is sometimes used as a metric for organisational D&I success - the theory being that the better the workplace is, the more comfortable people will be with disclosing. Unfortunately this can then lead to employers trying to game the metric by pressuring employees to disclose rather than by creating a workplace where employees are willing to do so voluntarily.

Note: the e-mail looks like it was directly sent from the CPO to me via the platform and I assume that it was sent only to the employees who did not fill this data.

I would not make this assumption unless you have some further information to suggest that this is the case. In my experience, it's pretty common for managers to send this kind of exhortation to everybody regardless of whether they've already filled it in; aside from anything else, it's usually a lot easier to BCC everybody than to identify the non-responders and mail only to those people.

My rationale for not answering some of these questions is that I believe that some of them are private matters, not a company concern.

As mentioned above, companies have legitimate reasons for wanting this information (as well as sometimes illegitimate ones!) But them wanting it, even for the best of reasons, doesn't mean you're obliged to provide it if you don't want to do so.

If you don't, then I'd recommend doing nothing about it until somebody raises it with you personally. If it gets to that, something like "I'm not comfortable disclosing that information" should be enough.

Most organisations are smart enough to realise that even if they can force people to answer the questions, they can't force them to answer questions accurately.

Answer 6

First and foremost: These types of surveys are supposed to be anonymous. Please read the quote below:

"Employee engagement surveys can include optional questions that allow LGBTQ+ employees to self-identify based on gender identity or sexual orientation. This is almost always done anonymously to ensure employee privacy, but LGBTQ+ employees may nonetheless remain fearful of the repercussions of disclosure."

Here is the link: https://www.thehrcfoundation.org/professional-resources/self-identification-of-lgbtq-employees#:~:text=Employee%20engagement%20surveys%20can%20include,of%20the%20repercussions%20of%20disclosure.

You can certainly ask your HR to verify that this an anonymous survey.

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Therefore, I am sure these questions/answers are part of an anonymous survey in your company.

In other words, HR is not supposed to know which answers come from which employees.

These answers are for general statistic, and not to be used to identify the sexual orientations of individual employees. (Otherwise, it will result in a big lawsuit. Tons of lawyers will take on this case).

Again, you can certainly ask your HR to verify that this an anonymous survey.

Note: The company may know which employees have filled out the survey or not. But, again, HR is not supposed to know which answers come from which employees.

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You don't have to answers these questions if you don't want to. It won't affect your chance of employment, aka they can't fire you for not answering these questions.

You can tell HR that you don't want to answer these questions for personal reasons. They can't punish you, or harass you for not answering these questions.

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In general, the answers are used for statistic only (and NOT for employment purpose).

Some companies can use these stats for their hiring purpose to show that they embrace diversity, etc...

However, some other companies, which receive grants and fundings from the government, may share these stats with the government agencies to show that they care about diversity.