HR Connect and Personal Sensitive Data

By now we hope you have had a chance to look at the University's new HR system, HR Connect. If you have, you will have noticed that under the Personal Details section you are invited to provide Sensitive Information about your Relationship Status, your Religion, your Ethnicity, your Nationality, your Sexual Orientation and your Disability status.

Why does the University need this information?

Edinburgh Napier University is committed to promoting equality of opportunity. The primary aim of our Equality and Diversity Statement (which can be found elsewhere on this site ) is to ensure that all staff are treated equitably and are not discriminated against on grounds of gender, marital status, race, religion or belief, colour, ethnic origin, nationality, sexual orientation, age or disability. In order for the University to monitor the effectiveness of this policy we need information from you that will be held on a computerised database covered by the provisions of the Data Protection Act i.e. only those within Human Resources who need to know this will have access to it.

Additionally, there is legislation in place (the Equality Act 2010) that states that as a public body the University must collect, monitor and publish the ethnicity, gender and disability rates of its workforce. As part of this process we also monitor other aspects of our workforce to ensure that we do not inadvertently discriminate. You should at all times remain confident that this information will remain confidential. An added bonus of the new system is that as your circumstances change so you can go into HR Connect and change your details. So, for instance, if you change your nationality all you have to do is log in and change it to the appropriate new nationality. It really is that easy!