With pressure to hire more employees faster, you can easily lose sight of keeping your applicant tracking system organized and compliant. But don’t forget about Equal Employment Opportunity requirements and the reporting that comes with that.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enforces laws that prohibit workplace discrimination. One of the ways it does this is by collecting workforce data from employers with at least 100 employees and federal contractors with at least 50 employees via the EEO-1 Component Report. This year, that report is tentatively due on May 17th, 2022, so now is not too soon to start gathering your report data. Beyond the report, the EEOC requires that employers keep personnel, payroll, and job evaluation records, among other data, for several years.
A common misconception is that EEOC record keeping only applies to hired employees. This is not true. Although the EEO-1 Component Report only requires information for current employees, the EEOC requires organizations to keep application forms and records dealing with hiring, even for individuals who were ultimately not hired, for at least one year. The reason? To protect your organization from fines. If someone files an EEOC claim against your organization citing unfair hiring practices, you need to be able to show complete records for the hiring process to prove it was carried out fairly.
Making sure you collect demographic data from applicants in a consistent and easy-to-manage way will save you loads of time if an EEO claim is brought against your organization and can save your organization from costly fines and negative publicity. When evaluating job posting platforms and tools, look for these elements to stay compliant:
- EEO-compliant templates for applicants to self-identify race, gender, disability, and veteran status.
- Automatically-generated reports on self-identification questions that can be broken down by date range, job listing, and department.
- Secure and organized applicant data storage.
Free job posting platforms like Indeed are great for getting a broad pool of applicants, but many of these don’t have the templates, reporting, and storage you need to make EEO compliance easy.
OnShift Employ has those features and integrates with Indeed, Monster, and other job boards so you can still reach that broad candidate pool while maintaining EEO records. Learn more and request a demo here.
