Should you answer diversity and disability questions on a job application?

Equality monitoring (also called diversity monitoring) asks about things like ethnicity, disability, religion or belief, sexual orientation, sex and gender identity, and age. The point is to look at the numbers across everyone who applies. Does the job reach a wide range of people? Does any group drop out at shortlisting or interview more often than others?

Most UK employers don't have to monitor at all. GOV.UK says employers aren't required to track the characteristics of the people who apply to them or work for them. Northern Ireland is the exception for larger employers, who must register with the Equality Commission and monitor their workforce. Even there, GOV.UK notes that employees don't have to answer.

UK data protection law describes the purpose narrowly: keeping under review whether there is equality of opportunity or treatment between groups of people. It is about groups, not about you.

No. Acas, the UK's workplace advice service, tells job applicants directly that they don't have to complete an equality monitoring form.

Its guidance for employers also sets out how the form should be handled if you do fill it in:

• Anyone interviewing you or deciding whether to hire you must not have access to your answers.
• The form should be kept separate from your application form and CV.
• It shouldn't ask for your name or anything else that identifies you.

The Government Equalities Office says the same about separation: monitoring information should be kept apart from application forms, so it can't influence who gets selected.

On an online form, these questions often sit in their own section, labelled optional or voluntary. You can't see how a particular employer stores the answers, which is one reason some people choose not to give them. That's fine.

GDPR Article 9: special category data. Under the GDPR, and the UK GDPR that mirrors it, some personal data gets extra protection. Article 9 calls it special category data: racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic and biometric data, health, and sex life or sexual orientation. The starting point is a ban. An organisation may use this data only if one of a short list of exceptions applies, such as your explicit consent or a duty under employment law. Whatever the basis, the privacy notice for the form has to tell you why the data is collected and on what legal basis (Article 13). If it doesn't, that's a fair reason to hold back.

UK: monitoring comes with limits. The Data Protection Act 2018 gives employers a specific condition for using ethnicity, religion or belief, health and sexual orientation data to monitor equality. It comes with limits that work in your favour:

• It doesn't cover using the data for measures or decisions about you in particular.
• It doesn't cover processing likely to cause you substantial damage or distress.
• You can give the employer written notice not to process your data this way. After a reasonable period, they can no longer rely on this condition to use it.

The ICO, the UK's data protection regulator, adds two practical rules for recruiters: ask for special category information only at the stage of recruitment where it's needed, and don't ask about health unless it's relevant to the role.

UK: health questions before a job offer. In England, Wales and Scotland, section 60 of the Equality Act 2010 says an employer must not ask about an applicant's health, including disability, before offering the job or putting the applicant in a pool for an offer. There are five exceptions. An employer may ask in order to:

1. find out whether you need adjustments to take part in an assessment or interview;
2. check that you can carry out a function that's intrinsic to the job;
3. monitor the diversity of applicants;
4. take positive action for disabled people;
5. confirm a disability that is a genuine requirement of the role.

So a monitoring question about disability is allowed, and so is "Do you need any adjustments for the interview?". A general health questionnaire before an offer isn't, unless one of these exceptions applies.

Monitoring questions are about groups. The adjustments question is about you, and answering it can help. It's how you get extra time on a test, step-free access, a format that works with your screen reader, or whatever else you need for the process. Acas notes that employers can ask whether you need adjustments because of a disability.

The question is about the recruitment process, not your medical history. You can describe the adjustment you need.

It's your decision, and either choice is legitimate.

Reasons people answer: the numbers only mean something if enough people fill them in. An employer that monitors properly can spot where it loses applicants from some groups, and fix it.

Reasons people don't: you can't see how a particular employer stores the data, the privacy notice is vague, or it simply feels too personal on a form for a job you haven't been offered.

A middle path works too. You can answer some questions and skip others. On the application forms we've recorded, these questions usually come with a way to decline, worded as "Prefer not to say", "I don't wish to answer" or "Decline to self-identify". If a required question has no such option, it's reasonable to ask the employer about it.

Trabalero is a job application autofill, and by default it leaves these questions to you. It doesn't fill them or store your answers, and it never sends them to AI. The field stays empty and is marked "answer manually", so you can see it was left for you on purpose.

If you'd rather not retype the same answers on every form, you can let Trabalero store and fill them: turn on Self-identification in Settings. It's off until you switch it on, and even then these answers are never sent to AI.

Our list follows the Article 9 categories that appear on application forms, and adds veteran status and gender identity. How Trabalero handles sensitive questions.