Employers' responsibilities: equality monitoring

You do not have to track how many job applications you receive from different groups of people, or the characteristics of the people working for you.

If you collect personal information (for example, ethnicity, gender, faith, sexuality) about job applicants or staff, you must protect their data.

You must not discriminate against a candidate based on their personal information.

Acas (Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) has an equality and diversity monitoring form template that you can include with job application forms.

Northern Ireland

You must register with the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland if you employ 11 or more people who each work more than 16 hours a week.

Once you’ve registered, you must ask your employees, apprentices and job applicants to fill in an annual monitoring form that asks if they are from Protestant or Roman Catholic communities. Your employees do not have to answer the questions if they do not want to.

Find out more about equality monitoring on the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland website.