Work won’t change my name after marriage

[Workproblem1]

I’m hoping someone can give me some advice. I got married 6 weeks ago, filled in all the forms at work before I went off, so it would be done before I got back to work. I emailed IT and gave the information and asked for my emails and usernames to be changed. The only things they have changed is my payroll and the name on my email account. My email address is still my maiden name and my usernames for the different computer systems are still in my maiden name. I was told they have changed everything that they can but it’s left me really deflated, it’s important for me to change my name I think it looks untidy and unprofessional to have an email address that doesn’t match the name. It’s also causing a lot of confusion with my clients who I have regular email contact with.

Has anyone had the same problem and can offer some advice? I don’t want to use my maiden name for work purposes as it’s not my name anymore and want everything the same.

Ask them why.....
For all those saying the OP is being unreasonable, I assume you would be fine with someone being forced to keep their married name after divorce?

I changed my name on marrying and IT updated it for me across all the systems and put a link in behind the scenes so any emails to my old name are automatically forwarded to my new name seamlessly.

It's not difficult and I also agree it does look unprofessional to me too. I'm the business I work in everything needs to match for security reasons so it gets changed.

Whatever your views on name changes after marriage, if someone does change their name, legally, then work should respect that. Ditto If people divorce and choose to change their surname.
Was never an issue in my work place. In fact if you changed your name, the old and new email addresses were linked, so if someone typed in your old email address, it automatically resolved it to the new address.

I'd take it up with HR if IT refuses to budge.

I had this when my employer was owned by a Spanish company - as they don't ever change their name on marriage in Spain, they didn't have the ability to change my surname while keeping the data so had to set me up from scratch which was a real pain.

Took a frigging year for mine to be changed across all the systems and a lot of chasing! Madness.

Thank you to everyone who has been helpful. I don’t see it as advertising my marital status my name has changed and work should respect my decision. My view is If my name is Sarah Jones clients will expect to be emailing a Sarah Jones and not a Sarah smith. People won’t know if they’re emailing the correct person and I get a few queries from new clients a week. And with my work accounts should also match my name.

IT are stalling and not giving me an answer but the usual thing is they have changed everything they can.

Escalate it, because they're not doing all they can, otherwise it'd be done!

Whether you refer to yourself by your maiden name or your husband's surname is a choice for many, but for some women not to change their name could be seen as disrespectful to cultural traditions or their heritage or religion.

Point that out should you complain to HR.

Utter pain as it should be straightforward. Meanwhile can you add to your email signature after your married name in brackets (formerly .......) or (nee.....,.).

If anyone asks just say IT are working on changing your name after getting married, it's a work in progress...

Of course it can be changed. My colleague recently transitioned and everything changed for her. They're just being a pain and it matters not a jot if your reasoning for changing is that you're married. I knew a Samuel who managed to get his changed to sam@ etc etc

I had this when I got married from work. Because of all the different platforms I worked on it completely put everything out of whack and I couldn't log onto things for weeks.

I then got divorced the following year and had to go through it all again 😅

Probably just not a priority to them

Of course they can do it. As loads of PPs have pointed out, they just need to create an alias using your new name, and make it the default.
Why are people giving the OP a hard time? She's taking about what she (very reasonably) wants. So what if it isn't what you want or you personally don't find it important.

Of course the IT department can do it. I work in the public sector and see people's email addresses being changed a lot, it's no big deal.

And while I don't personally think women should change their names on marriage, this is OP's choice, so is irrelevant to the discussion of whether IT should change the email address or not.

Telling someone your name and giving a different email address doesn’t look professional in my opinion. It looks lazy.

Don't be ridiculous. It's not uncommon and I've never heard anyone comment on how it "doesn't look professional" - in fact I've never heard anyone comment about it at all.

It’s not unprofessional - I see this all the time and assume it’s because they got married. It is annoying that the IT dept have been slow to make the changes but I would honestly roll my eyes if this confused clients.

Username often cannot be changed-but it is only for users use not for everyone else to see. Email address can be changed without problem

They can give you a new email address with old email as an alias. This is standard. People change their name for all sorts of reasons. You’re honestly telling me that if you got divorced and were changing your name for less happy reasons they’d say “no, too difficult”. They’re being dicks.

I work for a tech company.

It took them 2 months to process my name change. I told them it was embarrassing that the uk gov turned round my driving licence in 10 days and we couldn't do better.

That aside, it is possible in the domain to do this. My old email remains and redirects. I login with new name, everything displays as new name.

Just to add that it's all alias etc because the email account is the same, access to all history etc.,

Email IT and cc in DPO and HR reference compliance with GDPR.

YANBU it's your name, they need to change it.

What if you'd just got divorced. Would they force you to keep your ex's name?

Do they have the same issue when John becomes Jane? That'd become a tribunal.

Ps IT can change it within 24 h:)

YABU. It's a PITA because 50% of the time we need to change it back again a few years later.

It doesn’t look good if you are saying one name and emailing another. With all the scams you could look dodgy.

And it only takes 5 mins. In the grand scheme of things, it's nothing