The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which is responsible for enforcing federal laws prohibiting discrimination against employees based factors such as race or disability, recently adopted several revisions to its requirements for EEO-1 reporting.
The EEO-1, also known as the Employer Information Report, is a compliance survey that private employers with 100 or more employees and federal contractors with 50 or more employees are required to complete. The EEO-1 already compiles company data categorized by race/ethnicity, gender, and job category; now, according to the new rule, employers must also disclose summary wage and hour data for each of the ten job categories and fourteen gender, race, and ethnicity categories.
The purpose of this new rule is to provide the EEOC and employers with “insight into pay disparities across industries and occupations,” which the EEOC believes will aid in assessing claims of discrimination. EEOC Chair Jenny R. Yang also expressed hope that aggregate reports compiled from this data will “assist employers in evaluating their pay practices to prevent pay discrimination” and facilitate voluntary compliance without requiring federal intervention.
Due to the increased burden the new reporting rule places on employers, the EEOC has changed the filing date for EEO-1 submission from September 30 to March 31, which will coincide with the issuance of W-2s for the previous year. This rule will go into effect beginning with the 2017 work year, for which the filing date will be March 31, 2018. The EEOC has also modified the timing of the “snapshot period” during which employers must identify their workforce. The “snapshot period” has moved from the third quarter of the fiscal year to the fourth, requiring employers to report employment data from any one pay period between October 1 and December 31.
The 2016 EEO-1 was not affected by the new rules, and was required to be filed by September 30, 2016.