HR Email...

Quite.

It's a protected characteristic too so any employer needs to have very good reasons to be asking. Equal opportunities and diversity monitoring have been mentioned on the thread but a) those cannot be done by stealth - employers should be upfront and allow the employee to decline to provide the information b) if it was EO then a "computer says" answer wouldn't have been needed and EO monitoring is not done by payroll/finance.

However, the op does seem to be a bit confused about exactly what they are asking and seemed to think originally it was about title rather than marital status. Who knows what's really going on?!

I am an employer and we never ask our staff their marital status. What legitimate reason woudl we have for recording such information on our systems ?

We hold information on who to contact in an emergency , because our staff travel abroad with work. But we don't ask who the person is, do they live with them, what is their relationship etc . It's none of our business .

You can't just randomly ask staff for information you fancy knowing . It doesn't matter if you ask both men and women.

" we need it for our computer systems " is not a legitimate answer to the question " why do you need it ? "

And if it's newer and being sold to UK companies surely it's not beyond the wit of the developer to remove or at least have the ability to bypass irrelevant information?

Exactly how old is this software? We have had independent taxation since 1990-1991 and the recent changes that have come in to undermine this principle (child benefit changes and a transferrable allowance for married people) are not dealt with via PAYE

Linky for those who are interested: www.parliament.uk/Templates/BriefingPapers/Pages/BPPdfDownload.aspx?bp-id=sn04392

Surely ALL men have to be asked their marital status as their title doesn't give any clues.

Oh yes and this ^^

Did marital status affect tax and/or pension in the past? I don't think it does anymore? Could it be old software?

Surely ALL men have to be asked their marital status as their title doesn't give any clues.

I actually think they should be applauded for realising a woman's marital status may not be reflected in their preferred title.

I assume they need marital status for something to do with tax or pensions or maybe next of kin.

Why would 'Other' be for civil partnerships? I would describe that as 'Married'.

OP you said the compulsory field was 'Single, Married, Divorced or Other'. On what basis therefore do you think men aren't asked? Their title being Mr doesn't give that information.

Mind you, I will admit that whether someone knows my marital status or not isn't something I feel it's a case of "putting up with" tbh.

"No men who work here have been asked."

Are you sure?

Aren't there two issues? Weren't they saying with the first question "since you are Miss you might expect we could fill this compulsory box in for you but we can't" - actually, they should've not mentioned your title and asked you for the data regardless.

Actually other basically is for civil partnership. This whole area to my knowledge is for equal opportunity monitoring.

Exactly. So it is a "men-wouldn't-have-to-put-up-with-this" issue.

Because they don't.

Sorry, Procrast, I missed your post!

Marital status can be relevant for pension beneficiaries if you die in service?

I know when DH was DP, I had to specifically name him as the beneficiary; it was automatic for spouses.

Then challenge it. They need to be able to explain why it is a compulsory field for women when it isn't for men, if it is 'needed' for the payroll.

" they dont ask men because men are just Mr"
They had your title recorded as Miss, is that not the same though?
They have a title but marital status is unknown.
I'll be interested to hear what their logic is.
I was in a job a number of years and a missive came down that they needed our marital status. I though it was quite intrusive.
I was divorced and my area manager thought this was hilarious for some reason ,much fake embarrassment etc (nob)

They might need to know for pension reasons or death in service grant (if you get one). Some benefits can only go to a surviving married partner.

And do they ever review this data? Do they ask everyone? Because if not the data is already incorrect.

Chances are that field has been there for a long time, most payroll systems don't completely change their database structure very often. So, at times in the past the information has been needed. It could quite possibly be needed again in the future.

The admin staff have the choice of -

1. change everyone to 'other' and risk not having the information if the tax system changes to need it
2. leave older records as they are and not bothering to ask new starts, which leaves them with inconsistent garbage data if it changes
3. just ask. It's not a complicated or discriminatory question if they ask men as well.

Standard field built into a database because marital status might, at some point, be relevant (it used to be for tax purposes). Easier to build the information in than retrofit it. Software is likely to not be UK specific either, so in other tax jurisdictions (US?) it could be vital information. Applies to men as well as women. Annoying but just bureaucracy.

They could just tick other for everyone, but then some people would be offended at that and want it to say something else. And under the DP act data should be accurate, so they shouldn't just bung something in without checking with the employee what the accurate information is.

I agree it should be dealt with as a software issue, I never said otherwise. The OP could, if she is minded to, contact whoever is responsible for DP compliance and inform them that they might be collecting unnecessary data through their payroll software.

I said what it isnt is a sexist outrageous men-would-not-have-to-put-up-with-this issue.

Yes, they should just tick other, what's the purpose of it?