A month and a half has now passed since the release of the new scheduling letter, and the OFCCP has finally provided federal contractors with some guidance on submission of employee compensation data under ‘Item 19’ of the itemized listing. The newly released FAQ provides a bit of clarity on what many considered a hefty and confusing request.
Below, we summarize OFCCP’s guidance on contractor submission of required versus suggested (not required, but allowed to include) compensation data:
Required
- Employee-level data
- OFCCP reiterated that the term “employee” is broad enough to include temporary and contract workers. However, you should only include employees that are on the payroll and receive W2s (not 1099s).
- Sex, race/ethnicity, hire data, job title, EEO-1 category and AAP group for each employee.
- Base salary and/or wage rate, hours worked, bonuses, incentives, commissions, merit increases locality pay and overtime for each employee.
- Actual amount paid in the 12-month period preceding the workforce analysis snapshot date.
- Electronic submission, if maintained in an electronic format.
Not Required, but can include
- Factors that can affect an employee’s compensation (e.g., education, experience, etc.).
- Documentation regarding compensation policies.
Other items worth noting:
- Due to the confidential nature of compensation data, the OFCCP further emphasizes that “identifying numbers” may be provided in lieu of employee names. Interestingly, the OFCCP also addressed confidentiality concerns in the ‘note to reviewer’ document that goes along with the itemized listing. The note to reviewer goes beyond just dummy coding names and actually says that you can code salary. Specifically it states, “… alphabetical or numeric coding or the use of an index of pay and pay ranges, consistent with the ranges assigned to each job group, are acceptable for purposes of a compliance evaluation”.
- Employee’s most recent hire date should be provided (if employee was re-hired).
- As per Directive 2008-02, race/ethnicity data can be submitted using the seven [EEO-1] categories.
Although the guidance provided by this FAQ does not lessen the administrative burden, contractors can now find some solace in understanding what data is necessary for a “complete” submission!
By Yevonessa Hall, M.P.S., Consultant and Rachel Gabbard, M.A.,HR Analyst, DCI Consulting Group
