The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has yet to announce a firm date for opening the 2022 EEO-1 Component 1 Report filing system. Instead, since January 2023, the EEOC site has stated that the portal will open “sometime” in mid-July 2023. The EEO-1 requires covered employers to report by job category the race, ethnicity and gender of its employees. Covered employers include all employers with 100 or more employees and federal contractors with 50 or more employees and a federal contract of $50,000 or more. The EEOC will require use of the new portal it created in 2021 to complete the filing, see link.
By and large, it is believed the report will keep the same format as years past. Last year, the EEOC announced one minor change to the 2021 Component 1 Report - it discontinued the EEO-1 Component 1 Type 6 Establishment List Report for establishments with fewer than 50 employees. Moving forward, these establishments will use the Type 8 Establishment Report.
In addition to no firm date for the opening of the portal, there has been no official word on the time period from which employers should create their report. Using the last two filings as an example, the EEOC has requested data from a single pay period in Q4 of the filing year to serve as the basis of the report. If that holds true, covered employers will need to create a report that includes all employees who were active during any single pay period in either October, November or December of 2022.
If you are interested in receiving assistance with the 2022 EEO-1 Component 1 Report, let us know. Again, the filing system is tentatively scheduled to open in mid-July 2023 and it remains to be determined when the system will close.
In 2022 OFCCP launched its Contractor Portal, which requires qualified federal contractors and subcontractors to verify their compliance with Affirmative Action Plan (AAP) requirements on a yearly basis. Recently, OFCCP announced that contractors will be required to complete this year’s certification through the portal by June 29, 2023.
No, companies can still register today, and need to get the ball rolling. Like most government reporting, it’s best to register ASAP, as waiting until the last minute will lead to getting trapped in a logjam of late filers.
Problems for your organization may surface immediately as the OFCCP wants contractors to verify compliance company-wide for each establishment. When you register your company for the first time, you will be asked to enter your Federal Employer Identification Number (FEIN) and EEO-1 Company Code which the portal will use to pre-populate organizational information. The number and list of establishments will be based on EEO-1 reporting data, but as most contractors are aware, there is rarely absolute harmony between their EEO-1 and AAP reporting structures. Furthermore, federal contractors such as Universities and Higher Ed are not required to file EEO-1 reports at all!
To further flummox contractors, last year, the agency used 2018 EEO-1 filing information to pre-populate the forms, so in addition to already being structurally misaligned, the information is likely to be out of date for many filers. This will create an additional burden for contractors who must now manually add in establishment information. Prior filers will enjoy the benefit of having last year’s information saved and will only need to update any establishment information that has changed over the past year.
Keep this in mind - the OFCCP would very much like contractors to update the establishment information in the Contractor Portal to reflect the AAP structure instead of the EEO-1 structure (Functional AAP clients, we are looking at you) however they cannot require contractors do so!
The good news is that there is still plenty of time to verify compliance and submit certification.
OFCCP themselves have released a User Guide that covers registration and filing. This will help your organization setup a profile and invite users to file the verification by establishment if you so wish.
If you are interested in receiving assistance with the OFCCP Contractor Portal, let us know. Again, OFCCP is requiring all qualified contractors to have their verification completed by June 29, 2023. Contractors should not delay in preparing themselves to file today!