Hi All!,

We are being requested by our Marketing Department to provide demographic information on our employees. This information will be used to formed a focus group within the company on issues relating to the feel and design of our products and services. As an HR Professional and standard practice, we are uncomfortable in sharing this information outside of our group. The information being requested is employee name, age and gender.

 Has anybody come across this request and how did you deal with it? 

Any ideas or suggestion will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

V

While I don't think it is illegal to use that information in marketing, it is definitely not best business practice.

Could you turn them around by suggesting that they place the focus group message/request on a company bulletin board and get employees who would like to volunteer to participate? They could even specify the demographic(s) that they are looking for.  Because they you know they want to participate.  Because even if you gave them the info, the chance that those they pick being willing to voluntarily be part of a focus group is probably only 50/50. Are you going to require those that they pick to care, give good feedback, etc? And the bad 50 might corrupt the good 50. 

Attaching name to age and gender and handing it to people outside of HR is like slapping a sticker on every manager in the marketing department that reads "please sue me for age discrimination and any type of discrimination that may be proscribed in our state that covers transgender and related issues".  You may as well slap the sticker on everyone they have coffee or tennis meetings with while you're at it.

I would have them outsource the focus group and use a volunteering method that does not specify any age for participation so that the external marketing firm can do the qualification process and keep all of that stuff out of the Company's activities.