Employers with 100 or more employees (and federal contractors with 50 or more employees) must submit an EEO-1 Report annually, detailing the race, gender, and ethnicity of its workforce. In September of 2016, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) issued a revised EEO-1 Form, which would have required employers to submit extensive data related to employee compensation. For each EEO category, the revised EEO-1 Form would have required employers to identify the number of employees in each of twelve pay bands. Starting with 2017 data, the filing deadline was also pushed back to March 31.
Over the past several months there were calls from the business community for the new Director of the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) to initiate a review of the revised EEO-1 Form pursuant to OMB’s authority under the Paperwork Reduction Act – which requires every federal agency to obtain approval from OMB to collect information from the general public in order to ensure that the benefit of the information collection outweighs its burden. On August 29, 2017, the OMB answered that call and issued an immediate stay of the compensation data collection portion of the revised EEO-1 Form. The basis of the stay? Since issuing the revised form, EEOC released data file specifications for employers to use to submit the data. OMB stated that these specification were not included in the public comment process and the specifications change the burden estimate. OMB also found that the revised EEO-1 Form contrary to the standards of the Paperwork Reduction Act and questioned the utility of collecting the information.
So what does this mean for employers submitting EEO-1 Reports? Most importantly, the compensation aspects of the revised EEO-1 Form do not need to be reported. However, the revised filing deadline remains intact. So the 2017 EEO-1 Reports are not due until March 31, 2018. Just as before the revised EEO-1 Form was issued, the reports must contain data related to employee race, gender, and ethnicity. Finally, for our federal contractor subscribers, the stay does not impact the filing of your VETS 4212 form, which must be filed by September 30, 2017.