New EEO-1 reporting requirements suspended

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Contributors

We previously published information on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s new reporting requirements for which employers with 100 or more employees would be required include compensation data in their annual EE0-1 reports commencing on March 31, 2018 for 2017 data. These new EEO-1 reports include information regarding total compensation and hours worked by race, ethnicity and gender, EEO-1 category and salary ranges.

Employers now have a reprieve from these reporting requirements. The Office of information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it has indefinitely suspended these new reporting requirements. This change is welcome news to many covered employers who had concerns about the increased cost and effort of complying with the new requirements, as well as potential data security and confidentiality issues. Moreover, there was widespread concern that the expanded reports would be misleading and unhelpful in identifying valid areas of concern. The OIRA apparently shared these reservations, stating that it was “concerned that some aspects of the revised collection of information lack practical utility, are unnecessarily burdensome, and do not adequately address privacy and confidentiality issues.” As such, employers should continue to use the previous version of the EEO-1 form for upcoming March 31, 2018 reporting deadline until further notice.

The EEOC had planned to use the data from the new EEO-1 report as a source for investigations. However, employers should still be proactive in evaluating employee pay data to determine whether any vulnerabilities exist under the equal pay laws. Employers should obtain the input of counsel in performing any pay analysis.