Work HR: Preferred Pronouns are mandatory

[MoreThanAFeline]

Name changed for this. I wanted to update my address on the HR system at work. The instructions on how to do this say that something simple like updating an address can be done easily and that each section can be independently accessed.

When I try to click to the address part of the form, I get the attached error message.
Preferred Pronouns are apparently mandatory. My 'gender identity' is mandatory. My 'trans status' is mandatory. Sex is not asked for anywhere.

My workplace is supposed to be run by grown ups. How depressing.

My employer (a University!) reckons this is all fine. Here’s a couple of extracts from the data policy on the website:

Information that we collect and use about you
The University collects and uses the following personal information about members of staff.
(Please note that we do not hold all categories of personal information for all individuals, and the list may not be exhaustive.)

• Your personal details: your title, name, gender, marital status and date of birth
• Equalities information: your ethnic origin, religious belief, sexual orientation and any disabilities, impairment or long-term physical or mental health condition
• Your personal and work contact details: postal addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers
• Your immigration status, right to work documentation and previous addresses
• Your job title(s), job role, contractual entitlements and obligations
• Your remuneration, deductions, pension arrangements, National Insurance number and bank account details
• Your work objectives and activities, training, work-related travel and expenses, performance and conduct

We collect this information from you during the recruitment process and during your employment.
We will continue to retain equalities information after the deletion of your personal details for the purpose of equality monitoring: this information is anonymised to protect your privacy.

[it isn’t anonymised if it’s right there on my HR profile along with my name! It’s literally the opposite of anonymised]

Why we process this information, and our lawful basis

There are several lawful bases on which the University routinely processes your personal information. These are:

• to fulfil the University’s contractual relationship with you
• to comply with our legal obligations under equalities, health and safety, immigration, safeguarding and higher education governance legislation

[which equalities legislation specifies that ‘gender’ is a thing?]

That classification ended up being a little bit racist

So
Arab or Arab brit
but where is Any other Arab background
etc etc

And no americans (the biggest potential english speaking non-UK employee pool)

Should be
English - Arab
English - Asian Bang...
....
Non-UK - Arab
....
Scottish - Arab
...
Etc etc

That list also implies that if your are Arab etc etc and not from the UK that HR has not even classed you as employable.

See there is where data collection and classifications get messy. It shows that at an institutional level the employer has excluded some classifications. So if the third party want a merged group or excluded a class the employer should collect and merge after the data is collected.

How can they monitor equality issues if the Equality Act references sex and they are collecting data on gender?

I'd just like to add , purely for balance, that my branch of the Civil Service doesn't require any data collection of this type. Some new email signature templates came out this week, and they did have a bit that said 'pronouns ',but then it said in equal-sized letters 'optional '

I've been on A LOT of training recently and have been dreading the pronouns issue cropping up.... but its like it never existed. Again I can only speak for my area of the CS, but it does seem to be facing reality for a change.

“None” is a perfectly good pronoun.

Name: borntobequiet
Pronouns: none

But that was a joke. This shit is totally out of order.

Well, you learn something new every day - but it's not clear from this that showmen/showwomen are all white

www.travellerstimes.org.uk/index.php/news/2021/03/showmen-recognition-2021-national-census-symbolically-important

I read it as white snowman ⛄. To be honest it wouldn't surprise me these days...

Trying to work out what to tick if you are Scottish, English, Welsh, Irish and gypsy.

Can you choose multiple boxes?

Tell them you identify as the Princess Mia of Pan-Europe and your pronouns are Your Imperial Majesty/Her Imperial Majesty. How can they object?

We've had this. Lots of people refused to fill it in. We were encouraged to complete categories with "prefer not to say" if we felt uncomfortable. They really should have that option for anything like this.

I think there’s a difference between “prefer not to say” and “I do not believe in the premise of this question”

I do fill in the Hesa for my institution, we are asked for this information for academic staff but 'prefer not to say' is an accepted answer

Does HESA ask for preferred pronouns of staff? 🤔

Off the top of my head they do, but for every area to be completed there's always a 'not known' 'information refused' 'prefer not to say'

I've signed up for a course at my local college, and it forced you on the online form to have pronouns, so I chose he/him. I'm looking forward to being misgendered. 😇

You have to tick "White, other". DS and I are both white and both have heritages on each side that aren't just British (and his is different to mine) and everyone ticks "White British" for us when we aren't looking.

I filled out an NHS form today:
•sex assigned at birth - don't like the wording but options were plain old M/F
•gender - can't remember the options but there were about four, including "prefer not to say". I crossed the question out and wrote "don't know"
Small victories.

All of this information they are asking for is wildly intrusive and potentially opens you up to discrimination, however you answer.

Could you complain to HR about this?

Martial status and caring responsibilities opens women in particular up to discrimination as mothers and caregivers, and to misogynist judgements.

Gender ID, trans status and pronouns risks outing trans people, and people with various political or religious beliefs.

None of this is appropriate, it is none of your work place's business.

• Your personal details: your title, name, gender, marital status and date of birth
• Equalities information: your ethnic origin, religious belief, sexual orientation and any disabilities, impairment or long-term physical or mental health condition

All the info in bold made me shiver.

If the physical or mental health condition is not registered as a disability and/or would not impact my work, why should it be disclosed to work?

Why TF does my work need to know who I feel sexual attraction to?

Same about marital status? Why does work need to actually know whether I'm married, single, etc? I know it's a standard question but why in earth is it relevant?

And the religious belief...well for any people who were born muslim but renounced it, this could actually be a DANGEROUS question for some.

I could pick at more but it just gave me shivers to have all that info collected.

I used to live in a real life dictatorship and even if didn't require all that info to be given to employers!

Put Eskimo for ethnic origin.

seriously this is so awful, it’s untrue. I work in HE and have to fill out a paper form annually which I take great delight in scrawling all over about how gender is a social construct which I don’t subscribe to and that SEX is what’s covered by the equality act so maybe they need to ask about that as well.

I’ve also complained to HR that their training video on trans matters was legally incorrect. If a female employee complains to her manager about a trans female identifying colleague using the female bathroom the correct answer is not “the female employee needs to be spoken to about being kind”. The answer needs to be that female sex toilets are a legal obligation (that wasn’t an option).

Work don't actually need the
Info to know whether you can do your job. But they do need it for reporting purposes, so that they know if eg they have a gender pay gap (though this this should be a sex pay gap), whether they have a good balance of ethnicicity across the organisation, whether working mothers are being penalised etc etc.

The trouble is, as this thread clearly demonstrates, the data isn't accurate and woolly questions mean they can be answered subjectively rather than factually.

A business could claim to have an all female exco board, but if 50% of the board are transwomen, is that really an all female board? Depends on what data is gathered.

Some people might claim to be mixed race with just one g g grandparent of a non white race, others wouldn't. My DCs are technically mixed race, but both the races in their heritage are white, so depends on your interpretation of mixed race, etc.

they do need it for reporting purposes

Collect, yes. Attach to your personal HR record, no.

What reporting purposes? Pronouns aren’t a protected characteristic?

and they’re not asking about race or sex from the look of it which are protected characteristics!

Its technical points which HR has totally missed

The employer could collect data on if an employee ever seen a chicken cross a road.
Attaching that to a HR file and insisting that all employees supply the data is one problem.

The employer will say the data is for a third party but is not recognise that collecting and handing over data is a choice that carries obligations and that the responsibilty for having a lawfull reason remains with the employer. So the employer should make a IO complaint on its own behalf and ask for a decision on the lawfullness of the "ask" as well as its obligation to supply what is being asked.

They do have "prefer not to say" as an option though so I wouldn't mind too much about daft questions if i don't have to answer them. It does bother me if sex is mixed in with gender identity such that they aren't accurately recording sex and if you choose prefer not to say to that question important sex stats are wrong.