Samples & Examples

If you are either new to or getting back into affirmative action compliance, the ways you collect, analyze, and report data may have changed.

Presidential administrations come and go. National and regional OFCCP directors come and go. Each one wants to establish his or her mark on the way affirmative action and its corresponding regulations are interpreted. Some Directors even re-write the regulations in monumental ways. One has to stay up to date. What worked in your last audit may not work this time around, and what worked for you in one OFCCP region or district, may not work in the next.

Collect/Maintain Data in Smallest Reporting Unit
Regardless of the ever-changing ways of the OFCCP, if you collect and maintain all data and actions in their smallest unit (i.e. individually in logs or databases), you will be able to group and report them later in different ways for different purposes — or different demands of the Agency.

Internal Reporting Formats
With internal reporting — including your written AAP — you have multiple formatting options. You will need to choose formats and language that are compliant, of course, yet those that will make sense and will be understood by the managers in your particular organization.

External Reporting Formats
With external reporting — like that done during an OFCCP audit — you have fewer options, but you want to be sure you are collecting and reporting the data that is required in the regulations, and that will make sending the 22 items required in an audit as easy as possible.

Samples & Examples

Below are some reporting templates and formats we use in our public training programs. Take a look at them. You will find ideas of interest to use immediately or some that could be modified for your organization. These are just food for thought. Remember, you will want to prepare and present your data internally in a style and language that fits your particular organization.

Collecting Gender/Race/Ethnicity/Veteran Status/Disability Status Data

Asking employees and applicants to self-identify their gender and race/ethnicity is a requirement of most government and non-government contractors. Asking employees and applicants to self-identify their veteran status and disability status are a requirement for most government contractors. Remember, you should ask both applicants and new hires to self-identify, but they should have the option to not disclose – this exercise is voluntary for the applicant and/or employee. While an employee is not required to provide gender/race/ethnicity information to his/her employer, the employer is required to provide that information to various government reporting mechanisms (the EEO-1 Report and AAPs for example). If an employee does not self-identify, you will need to make your best guess to report to the government. For applicants, no guessing is required.

OFCCP-Compliant Recruiting Tools

Once you or your legal department confirms your status as either a government contractor or subcontractor, the “fun” begins for the HR team. Initially, your affirmative action compliance obligations may seem overly burdensome. Yet, if you set up the right record keeping systems at the outset, and then devote the necessary resources to both maintaining and analyzing those records, your obligations will become routine, manageable and controllable from both a cost and a risk perspective. In addition to the data collection tools you’ll find here, we provide below some time-saving resources to get you going in the right compliance direction.