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SuraLinkWritten by Rebecca Tipton, SHRM-SCP
BMSS HR Advisory
Putting the “Resource” in Human Resource Consulting
After many recent delays, the EEO-1 Data Collection Window is due to open on October 31, 2023 via the EEOC website for covered employers to submit their mandated 2022 EEO-1 reports by the close of the window on December 5, 2023. The EEO-1 report is required for both private-sector employers with 100 or more employees and for private-sector government contractor employers with 50 or more employees. While this report may seem daunting, particularly if you have never had to submit such a report previously, it is made much simpler by knowing what to expect and understanding the various resources available.
To get started, you should understand what the EEO-1 report is. The EEO-1 report is essentially a report providing data about your organization, specifically the sex and race or ethnicity of your employees by job category. Therefore, it can make the process much simpler if you compile all of your data in advance to ensure that everything is in order and ready to be submitted. The job categories to be used are specified by the EEOC, but they are fairly ubiquitous and include: Executive/Senior Level Officials and Managers, First/Mid-Level Officials and Managers, Professionals, Technicians, Sales Workers, Administrative Support Workers, Craft Workers, Operatives, Laborers and Helpers, and Service Workers. If this is your first year conducting an EEO-1 report, and you do not have these categories assigned yet, the good news is that there is still time to get everything in order. Simply review the nature of each of the position titles you have in your company and assign them to the appropriate job category. Once you have the job categories situated, you are ready to move on to the next step.
Next, each job category will need to be broken down into employee numbers by both sex and race or ethnicity, which hopefully has already been collected through a voluntary self-identification process, typically during onboarding. However, if an employee was given the option and did not elect to self-identify, the employer is then permitted to assign the employee to a category based on the information they have available, such as other employee records or visual observation. If you have not already requested self-identification from your employees, you fortunately still have time to do so, ideally through a method that will electronically compile your data to be easily sorted into the assigned job categories. The data for the report is derived from an employer-selected pay period during the fourth quarter of the calendar year, or between October 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022. Therefore, it should account for all employees who were employed at any point during that pay period.
Finally, you should know that there are many resources available to help. To start with, you may not know that you have two different options for how to submit your report. You can choose to manually enter your data line by line, which could be the simplest method if you have a relatively low headcount. However, if you have a large amount of employees and data to enter or simply have a good reporting system, you can instead choose to upload a data file. This actually leads us to another resource as the EEOC actually makes preparing a data file upload easier on employers by not only providing specific instructions for the formatting of the upload but also providing explanations of each field in a file titled “Data File Upload Specifications”. That’s also not the only resource available from the EEOC. They provide a full instruction booklet, which can be accessed through the website or by clicking on the link provided. Between the instruction booklet and the multiple fact sheets available on the website, you can find information for a number of different scenarios, such as how to account for remote employees, for mergers and acquisitions, or even how to voluntarily report non-binary employees. However, if you still feel overwhelmed or simply do not have the time, BMSS HR Services is here as a resource as well. Contact us at (833) CPA-BMSS or visit our website for more information.