The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s steps to discontinue EEO-1 demographic data reporting may be unprecedented, but that should not lead HR teams to scrap processes for complying with the requirement, attorneys told HR Dive.
EEOC submitted a proposal to end collection of a suite of EEO data reporting to the White House last month. The agency provided few additional details, but the change would also affect reporting requirements under federal employment laws like Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Regulatory review of the proposal concluded June 9, according to Office of Management and Budget records.
The EEO-1 program dates back to 1966, just two years after Congress’ passage of Title VII, which created EEOC. That longevity makes the prospect of ending the reports a surprising one, said Kara Govro, principal legal analyst at HR technology vendor Mineral Mitratech. But so far, she’s heard little discussion from employers about the news.
“I don’t think we’ve gotten a ton of questions about it, which makes me think it’s not hitting the news that hard,” Govro said. “My feeling is that employers are not getting wound up about this one way or another.”
EEO-1 reporting is an annual process that requires firms with 100 or more employees, as well as federal contractors with 50 or more employees, to submit demographic data reports of their workforces sorted by categories such as gender, race and ethnicity. While HR teams may feel relieved by the prospect of no longer being required to submit the reports, Govro said they might not want to get too comfortable.
“If you have a structure in place for putting this data together, don’t dismantle it just yet,” she said, hinting at the likelihood that a future presidential administration — namely, a Democratic one — could put the program back in place. “Save that [Microsoft] Word document or those instructions.”
Bryan Starrett, partner at Brooks Pierce, agreed, adding that the data employers would typically submit in EEO-1 reports will still exist in a raw form within their systems with or without the requirement. Additionally, failure to keep data collection procedures up to date could backfire if the EEO-1 program is restarted.
That’s in part because employers' job classifications may change over time and are likely to do so in the future, potentially meaning mismatches of employees in job categories. Additionally, EEO-1 forms require site-specific reporting, Starrett noted, and the same shifts may apply to offices or work locations.
“That kind of mapping has been done so thoughtfully over the years that to leave it by the wayside would be a little shortsighted,” he said.
There’s also the matter of state employment demographic collections. Earlier this month, Colorado lawmakers enacted a state-level EEO-1 reporting requirement that explicitly remains in effect even if the federal government repeals or discontinues its own requirement. Others like California and Massachusetts go even further, mandating that employers also submit pay data, which EEOC previously tried to implement with mixed success.
“When there’s a void at the federal level, the states are getting really comfortable with filling it,” Govro said. In the event that EEOC follows through with dropping EEO-1 reports, she added, “I would expect at least a handful of states to jump right on that.”
