Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) said it has completed its mailing of EEO-1 Notification Letters for 2017. It's now employers' turn to complete the annual workforce surveys, also known as EEO-1 reports, and return them by March 31.
- EEO-1 reports collect employment data on gender, race, ethnicity and job categories. Filing is mandatory under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Private-sector employers with 100 or more workers, and federal government contractors or first-tier subcontractors with 50 or more workers and a contract or subcontract of $50,000 or more must file an EEO-1 report.
- EEOC says that employers who filed an EEO-1 report in 2016 but haven't received a 2017 Notification Letter should immediately contact the EEO-1 Joint Reporting Committee at 1-877-392-4647 or [email protected].
Dive Insight:
Employers who must file EEO-1 reports might find searching for and reporting the data burdensome. But noncompliance has steep consequences: the penalty for knowingly filing false information, for example, can include prison time.
An Obama-era provision that would have obligated employers to report pay data on their EEO-1 survey was blocked by the White House last year, but employers still must submit the long-standing components of the form by March 31.
Collecting data for the report won't be nearly as time-consuming if information is added and routinely updated rather than squeezing the process into four weeks once a year. Gathering self-identification information from employees can be hard, since many balk at sharing data about race or gender; this means that data may be best captured from new hires. If you're still struggling with the process, check out HR Dive's list of "hacks" for EEO-1 reporting.