The new OFCCP scheduling letter and itemized listing have officially been released at reginfo.gov, and are effective immediately (starting October 1, 2014). As previously mentioned by DCI, there were substantial changes to the scheduling letter related to the new 503/VEVRAA requirements, although these proposed changes to the scheduling letter were NOT included in the 2011 NPRM, and there was no public comment period on specific changes to incorporate new 503/VEVRAA requirements. The OFCCP labeled these changes as “non-substantial” when corresponding with the OMB.
Specific changes related to additional information being requested under 503 include:
- Results of the evaluation of the effectiveness of outreach and recruitment efforts for qualified individuals with disabilities;
- Documentation of all actions taken to comply with audit and reporting systems;
- Documentation of the computations or comparisons described in 741.44(k) analytics (e.g., jobs openings, jobs filled, number of disabled applicants, etc.) for the AAP year, including updated data if the contractor receives the scheduling letter 6 or more months into their AAP year;
- The utilization analysis evaluating the representation of individuals with disabilities in the contractor’s workforce; including an updated analysis if the contractor is at least 6 months into their plan year during the scheduling letter date.
Specific changes related to additional information being requested under VEVRAA include:
- Results of the evaluation of the effectiveness of outreach and recruitment efforts for qualified protected veterans;
- Documentation of all actions taken to comply with audit and reporting systems;
- Documentation of the computations or comparisons described in 300.44(k) analytics (e.g., jobs openings, jobs filled, number of protected veteran applicants, etc.) for the AAP year, including updated data if the contractor receives the scheduling letter 6 or more months into their AAP year;
- Documentation of the hiring benchmark adopted, including an updated benchmark if the contractor is at least 6 months into their plan year during the scheduling letter date.
Specific changes related to both 503/VEVRAA include:
- Copies of reasonable accommodations policies and requests (Item 20);
- Assessment of personnel processes, including the date the assessment was performed, actions taken, and the date of the next assessment (Item 21);
- Assessment of mental and physical qualifications, including the date of the assessment, actions taken as a result, and the date of the next assessment (Item 22).
Specific changes related to the submission of personnel activity include:
- Submitting applicant flow, hires, promotions, and terminations data by racial subgroup, but the letter groups Pacific Islanders with Asians (not consistent with EEO-1 filings, but consistent with the OFCCP regulations in the Workforce Analysis). There is also no “two or more races” option. It will be interesting to see if the OFCCP accepts the additional two race categories to align with the data collected by contractors for EEO-1 filing purposes;
- Including the contractor’s definition of “promotion”;
- No pools being defined for promotions and terminations, as outlined in the 2011 NPRM;
- The inclusion of “unknown” race and gender information for applicants in the submission;
- The clear option to submit data by job group OR job title.
Specific changes related to the submission of compensation data include:
- The requested data is for all employees including per diems, temporary employees, full-time, part-time, etc. (please note, this definition of employee is different than the EEO-1 report definition);
- Compensation data provided in the disaggregate form (employee level), including job title, job group, EEO-1 category information, race, gender, and hire date of each employee;
- Compensation to include base salary, bonus, adjustments, overtime, commission pay, etc. identified in separate columns of data for each employee.
Please note: Although the scheduling letter is effective as of October 1, 2014, the OFCCP has indicated they will NOT send scheduling letters to supply and service contractors between October 1-October 15, 2014. The OFCCP has stated that contractors should use the 15 day period to review and understand the requirements outlined in the scheduling letter.
Stay tuned for more in-depth analysis on the new scheduling letter!
By: Joanna Colosimo, Senior Consultant and Fred Satterwhite, Principal Consultant, DCI Consulting Group