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Hi,
So just reading this thread that looks to rooted in 2022 😳 and still isnt sorted. Wooooow. A complete lack of action... interesting. Often it is said that in-action... we should also note and believe about an organisation. So this isnt a priority for Xero then... when doing payroll.. for human, living people?? Sounds like this is just a choice we should all be believing when making a decision about if Xero is the accounting tool for our organisations.

I say this because as a person who works in tech, i am horrified by the various different technically inaccurate excuses below, for what can only be a harmful and probelmatic stance and a business choice. Your tech isnt stopping you from fixing it, you are choosing not to prioritise it on your backlog. Our team dont get payslips from Xero, so I can only say im sorry to those that do.

We will probably leave now, after this. But if it helps... lets dispell some tech myths here shall we, because we wouldnt want technology to been a screen for discriminatory and harmful practice would we????

1. 'HMRC say we have to' What HMRC requires in their submission, is not ther same as what Xero need to submit and show to people. So the field you have to map to HMRC in the filing.. it doesnt have to be on the employee facing profile. It doesnt constrain the My Details view for employees and you could do what most orgaisations do and choose who sees what and select when they are utilised... if its a bit complicated to do that... then I would say that its worth the time and effort. But it isnt a technical constraint that cannot be fixed.
2. 'It has to be on the payslip' A payslip display is an employee facing document, its built by Xero and the format is generated by Xero and whilst the submission to HMRC may need to be binary... there is no rule about the payslip. The idea that you present the same data on the UX on the payslip and that it has to align with the HMRC data scheme.... the math aint mathin and someone needs to go and check that again with the people in the back who actually do that data submission.
3. 'We are forced to align' Hmmm, no. What this means is that even if it is aligned with HMRC and Global, it means that you BUILT your data model to align with it and you dont want to go to do the work to re-design it, when you build it to HMRC and now you would have to change it to do both HMRC submission and align with people and their actual human needs. So you dont want to make other options happen... when in fact this is now international scale impacts. Wowza. It takes work, but lets not pretend on this screen and chat that this is a 'HMRC says no=Xero tech says no'. In reality... this is 'HMRC Says no= Xero decided not to take ownerships of their tech stack and fix it because they didnt prioritise that ticket over in product'. This isnt a full re-write of the data model... unless you have a VERY brittle data model...
4. 'Add a second field' Even if you couldnt put a third gender on, which to be honest feels like asking for the minimum. If the Xero, UK HMRC and compliance team have really got you on this. Maybe you should take the idea of two fields....one for HMRC and one for everyone else to see. In part you should be backing this final ideas as a compromise, because Im sure, sure ,sure, that someone already suggested that internally and someone who didnt really think that this was worthwhile decided not to bother making it happen. .(not that this would be sufficient for our organisation, i would have expected that you would put the effort across the last 4 years to just deal with this properly instead of thinking that this thread and re-direct was sufficient) i would say that you could hide it from the payslip... so... why hasnt that been done at the minumum.... hmmmmm... is it because your product strategy doesnt care about it??
5. Lets be real here, inclusion takes effort, it is with care and an honest understanding of disliking this kind of tech smoothing being a way to bat off good people returning and returning and returning to this chat for 4 years in asking for Xero to decide to be on the right side of history. The UX is lazy and you shouldnt have put this down the list because the below escalations are really shameful.

Lets say it together, shall we... 'We at Xero have not yet prioritised decoupling the employee-facing gender identity field from the payroll filing field.'

Any update on this please? It' so important, it really does need a resolution

This is one for Xero to put pressure on HMRC. If recording is for HMRC matching purposes, please specify this so that it is clearer for payroll admins and non-binary employees.

60% of our workforce identify as non-binary and we work very hard to make our business a safe place for all LGBTQ+ staff and clients. The current gender options and automatic titles really undermines our efforts so we're really grateful for this ticket being raised and really hope that an additional non binary gender / no gender option can be created and Mx titles made available. Please do this! Thank you!

Just to add a suggestion and boost this further - At the least it would be great if we could remove title from the payslips so our staff are not misgendered every time they open their payslips.

Hi,

I just wanted to add my support to the addition of at least a third option for gender identity; perhaps 'non-specified' could encompass all.
We use other forms of identity for Revenue such as Name and National Insurance No. and ask for proof of those so having the decency to respect and support our employees choices seems like a good idea.

Hi,
At the company I work for we have several members of staff who are non-binary - as Andy has already mentioned, this is very distressing for staff who might log into their "my xero" account to access payslips or change other information and see male or female there.
It is also very difficult for myself from a practical POV as payroll admin to have to "guess" whether any of these staff would prefer to be classified as either male/female when forced to choose.
I understand currently the need to match HMRC, obviously this is an oversight on their part first and foremost.
Looking forward to any update as and when they come.
Thanks
Katie

Hi Team,

I see this is one of only 11 "Under Review" ideas - yet has only 2 votes - i can see dozens of other ideas, open for far longer than this one, with orders of magnitude more votes where no one from Xero has replied yet.

Be great if xero could try to keep to a meritocracy here and drop this from "under review" for one of the other issues not currently under review that has a lot more votes - e.g. integration of early payment discounts on invoices.

The answer to this one is simple - what are the legal (i.e. available to choose from on your passport) options to select from in each country Xero operates. Xero should match those. If there are 10 options in a particular country, fair enough - xero should make those available. If there are 3 options (M, F, Other/ Unspecified) then those should be the options available. Nothing else should be made available until it is included in the formal legal framework of the country of operation and no time wasted "reviewing" it at the expense of other more demanded ideas.

Thanks and apologies to the Andy - i empathise with your sentiment and any distress - but many of us are frustrated by many aspects of the various platforms we use - i fully support you arguing for this. I just don't support Xero bumping it up the queue at the expense of so many other issues that clearly have more demand (at the moment).

Hi Kelly,
Thank you for your response, I really apprecaite this being looked at,
I have attached a quick snapshot of the field I am looking at in the "My Details" section of Xero. I do think that when setting people up as well as allowing them to edit it themselves when set up, would be very useful,
Thanks,
Andy

Thanks for your idea, Andy.
To make sure it gets back to the right place in product can I check which area of Xero you're looking for this in? For example - would this be when setting up employees in payroll?

I hope that people, whether this affects them or not, will consider and vote for this as it is distressing for those of us who do not identify with either binary gender currently available.

Thank you,
Andy