Current employer requesting CV information but won't say why - WWYD?

[Piffpaffpoff]

DH has been asked to submit his CV information into a provided template by his work, a large multi-national company. All of his area have been asked to do this. No-one seems to be able to say why this info is required so naturally his first instinct is to be suspicious! Any thoughts/suggestions about what they might be up to? Can they request this without saying why and does he have to do it? Any HR opinions would be most welcomed.

Thanks.

They might be constructing a skills database.

A consulting firm I worked for had one so it knew what people it could bring people from different parts of the firm on to new projects. Project managers could search the database to staff each project.

I cant see why they wouldn't be open about that objective though.

Yes a skills database was my first thought too, but if that's what they wanted you'd think they'd be up-front about it, so they got the useful information about applications used etc rather than the rest of it.

We work for multinational and generally they want up to date cv's on file for when they are preparing bids. We do project work so after 12mths they really need updating.

Can't see why they wouldn't tell you why they wan it though

If it's a large multi-national is it possible that the top level have come up with something like this but been useless at explaining themselves as the request went out wider?

Sounds like a quality assurance protocol to me. We have to provide not on CV information but also copies of our degree certificates as part of our ISO9001 accreditation. I wouldn't think there is any reason to be suspicious

Thanks everyone - skills matrix/database is what I thought too, but DH is more of a pessimist and thinks there's a lot more to it than that. But if it was some sort of selection process there are rules around that that need to be followed, aren't there? Anyone??

I suppose it might be that they are going through a complex process to select people for redundancy and want to use the database to protect themselves legally to show they made the redundancy selection in a fair way based on skills and qualifications.

I suppose alternatively they might be preparing the way to make everyone reapply for their jobs.

However, we could all sit here making up all sorts of frightening scenarios but is there any reason to believe anything like that is about to happen in the firm?

Is the firm doing well?

I used to work in a large multinational in an area subject to legal regulation, we all had to provide this every two years as part of our training files (evidence of our previous experience), it was filed alongside our ongoing training records and job descriptions to demonstrate to regulatory bodies that we were appropriately trained.

Think there would be many legit reasons for doing this but it seems a bit cloak and dagger for them not to explain why. What was their response when he asked why?