HR Email...

[YouBetterWerk]

Name changed in case I out myself!
I was going to post this in AIBU but thought FC was actually more fitting.

I have recently been made permanent at my job and received this Email from HR when I got in this morning:

^Please can you see * in Finance and confirm your marital status to her. I understand your title is Miss but we are not to presume this means you are single. This is needed for payroll.^

I know the Ms/Mrs/Miss has been done to death but really??
And the 'not to presume you are single' line irked me slightly too. Or am I over thinking it?

I responded with a confused email saying 'Perhaps just Ms then?'

I am really struggling though, and feel like I want to say more but don't know what.
The sender isn't in work today so I am hoping someone can tell me if I'm being oversensitive or if anything else should be said?

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

Because they don't.

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

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.

"No men who work here have been asked."

Are you sure?

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.

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

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.

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.

Oh yes and this ^^

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

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?

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 ? "

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?!

Here's at least one major HR database supplier that uses the marital status field
docs.oracle.com/cd/E13053_01/hr9pbr1_website_master/eng/psbooks/hebn/chapter.htm?File=hebn/htm/hebn06.htm

In the US it affects benefits such as health insurance so will be a standard field in any major HR software. It's pretty standard to keep the information - and the men in the organisation will have filled in a form giving the info, they just won't remember . It's certainly been standard on the last 3 -4 jobs I've had to give that information (since 2000). Benefits here that are affected by marital status are largely pension related.

Interestingly marriage and civil partnership are one of the 9 protected characteristics www.equalityhumanrights.com/private-and-public-sector-guidance/guidance-all/protected-characteristics Which means you can't be discriminated against because of them ... I didn't know that!

Sage payroll asks for marital status for all. I'm fairly certain IRIS does to. I think there are some instances where tax codes can still be affected for those in receipt of widow/er pensions and other historical tax reasons but can't remember off the top of my head.

HMRC still have the info on their systems as well.

Originally I was asked whether I was a 'Miss', and when I went up to clarify I was told it was about 'Single, Married, Seperated, Other' (I did say 'can't you just put Ms?' when I first went up but was told they needed to 'tick the box of maritial status as well')
I stealthily asked the three men (there are only three in the office) if they were asked, one wasn't sure and the other two said they definitely weren't. One said 'Why would I be asked that?'

Same for gender - you need to tell your employer if you receive a Gender Recognition Certificate and they need to update the payroll records. Apparently those files at HMRC are then on a restricted access basis but yup, the payroll department needs to know.

I just asked our staff and none of them remember me asking about marital status. And yet, I know that everyone of them filled it in on the starter form.

So what's your process for managing changes to marital status Blistory? Because unless you ask periodically or require people to tell you that information is going to go out of date for some people over the course of their employment.

There are no instance where tax codes can be affected by marriage. Unless you employ very, very elderly people who were aged at least 65 when married couples allowance was withdrawn about years ago.

UK employment and taxation law is as similar to the USA as butter is to milk so pointless to compare. In the UK marital status is a protected characteristic like sexuality.

I don't give a jot about marital status but HMRC do and use employers to provide that information. Less so now that tax credits are paid directly.

I've just asked HMRC and they've said that they require to know the marital status, age, gender and date of birth of individuals for tax purposes. Which is probably why the major software suppliers still have a field for it.

Like I said, it matters not to me but it's information that we collect about all employees - not just women. It's up to an employee to tell us if their personal details change - I don't chase them for it and assume they'll update their details with HMRC directly if they don't want us to know something personal.

As a small company I tend to know when staff get married or divorced but wouldn't dream of updating their status or name or title unless they ask. It is however surprising the number of times payroll get hassled for not updating personal data with the new married name as if it's the default position.

I can't find anything on HMRC that says why they need to know marital status other than if there are name changes, one of the spouses was born before 1935 or tax credits involved. If it is the latter that is not dealt with via PAYE and I'm fairly sure it doesn't matter whether you are married or "just" cohabiting

It seems really odd. I've been an employer, I work for employers and we've never had to collect martial status data for HMRC Admittedly I have a slightly much sexier job than administering payroll.

I am intrigued now as to whether this is an actual HMRC requirement, just a shorthand for "update your details if you are changing them because you've got spliced" or if it's one of those funny, antiquated things that still knocks about from time to time like mothers' names missing from marriage certificates and not being able to add deceased fathers to birth certificates if you weren't married.

Point of information - mothers names and occupation have been on birth and martiage certificates in scotland for many years

I don't know Moving but we do have an employee who qualifies for married allowance which is probably why I've always assumed it's fine for the software to ask.

Marital status, off the top of my head, affects capital gains tax and inheritance tax as well, so I can see why HMRC need to know. I'd argue that there should be any taxation differences due to marital status/civil partnership status but that's a whole other argument. Thinking about it, HMRC do appear ( and employers by default as collectors on behalf of HMRC) to be entitled to quite a bit of information which comes under the definition of protected characteristics.

I suppose that's all fine as long as none of it is used by employers to discriminate. And as I said above, it does genuinely appear to be information that both men and women have to supply.

Moneysoft payroll doesn't have a marital status box, so HMRC can manage perfectly well without knowing from me whether the people I run payrolls for are married or not.