When Should You Resurvey Your Workforce
for the New EEO-1 Report?
As many of you are now aware, the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC) has revised its Employer Information Report
(EEO-1 Report) for the 2007 reporting cycle. Starting with
the report due September 30, 2007, covered employers must
use the new form which includes several changes to the race
codes as well as revisions to the job categories. What you
may not know is that while you must use the new form,
you are not required to resurvey your workforce or begin using
the new race categories until the 2008 EEO-1 report. The EEOC
has given employers a "transition period" and is
not mandating that they resurvey their workforce before submitting
the first new EEO-1 form.
There are reasons why you may want to wait to resurvey your
workforce and utilize the new race codes. The Office of Federal
Contract Compliance (OFCCP) has not yet made changes to their
regulations (Executive Order 11246) to match the current EEOC
regulations. This means you may have to collect or report
data differently to meet the regulatory requirements for both
the EEO-1 report and your Affirmative Action Plans (AAPs).
You may need to have two fields in which to keep racial data
in your Human Resource Information System (HRIS). For example,
the female employee who previously self-identified as "African
American" but now, with the new categories, self-identifies
as "Two or More Races" would need to have both categories
identified. This is because you would count her as "Two
or More Races" for the new EEO-1 report but "African
American" for your AAP Workforce Analysis. The current
OFCCP regulations require that each organizational unit display
the total number of male and female incumbents in the five
traditional racial/ethnic groups. Those five currently do
not include the new EEOC categories of "Two or More Races"
or "Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander."
The OFCCP has announced its intention to propose interim
regulations within the next few months in order to coordinate
the agency's requirements with those of the EEOC and avoid
inconsistencies and unnecessary burden to contractors. We
advise our clients to wait until these revisions have gone
into effect to avoid collecting and maintaining two sets of
data.
You will, however, need to split your employees now categorized
as "Managers & Officials" into the two new categories
of "Executive/Senior Level Official" and "First/Mid
Level Officials & Managers." Since this action does
not require you to resurvey, you can make this change any
time before September 30, 2007.