Can you please help me understand and point to the any law book if its legal for an employer to ask an employee to fill diversity attributes such as race, religion, gender identity, sexual preferences for internal database profiling? I would like to understand what happens with the collected data? Most of this may be optional information for the team members. But in general, how will we use this data? Does law require to have any mandate or purpose as it is being collected for…
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Hi Arshamercy,
Those data being collected fall under the Information Technology Act 2000 which largely governs the data protection for India coz the Personal Data Protection Bill of 2019 is not yet approved by legislation.
Now the employer collecting those data must be clear to state as to where are those information be used, coz the employee has the right to refuse to mention since these are all personal information. Nonetheless, when the employer will mention “data profiling” - but the data requested like race, religion, gender identity and sexual preference is kinda strange to ask, coz most HR and payroll system will not require that - not unless the company is into research or something but still its strange to ask.
The employee can refuse to mention those and can say he is protected under the data protection law.
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Thank you @Ludy for sharing these insights.
What started of as a global project to include more diversity attributes voluntarily, turned to a global mandate to include these attributes on employee profile with a consent… Is there a way, as a HR, I can quote refusing to gather info on race and religion for India. Their query is now why should India refuse, would the law refuse to allow? if yes, I will need to provide supporting proofs.
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