BACKGROUND: Recently the company had to downsize and my department (Human Resources) went from five employees down to two, leaving all the responsibilities to administrative assistant and myself. The key loss that we took was losing the legal and ethics manager whom administered all of the employee records. Since then I have not maintained employee records, including hiring records, employee classified records, and all other paperwork associated with maintaining the affirmative action plan. There was an article in the Sunday paper that has made me worried about my bad record keeping habits. Also we have just received a letter from the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), stating that we have been selected for a full desk audit regarding our affirmative action plan. The first thing that we are going to do is perform an internal audit. The main focus for the internal audit will be our employee record keeping including information specific to our affirmative action plan. The audit is going to be designed to measure the effectiveness of the affirmative action plan, document personnel activity, identify problem areas where remedial action is needed, and to determine the degree to which FCI’s affirmative action plan goals and objectives have been obtained.

ADUIT: During this audit we will be performing statistical analyses to determine the existence of adverse impact in the selection process and pay disparities and preserving personnel and employment records. Starting with reviewing personnel activities, they are going to be reviewed to ensure nondiscrimination and equal employment opportunity for all individuals without regard to their race, color, gender, religion, or national origin. These activities include; recruitment, advertising, and job application procedures, hiring, promotion, upgrading, award of tenure, layoff, recall from layoff, rates of pay and any other forms of compensation including fringe benefits, job assignments, job classifications, job descriptions, seniority lists, sick leave, leaves or absence, or any other leave, training, apprenticeships, attendance at professional meetings and conferences, and any other term, condition, or privilege of employment. Federal contractors are required to preserve any personnel or employment records made or kept by the contractor for two years from the date of the making of the personnel record or the personnel action, whichever occurs later. We also need to follow the rules and regulations of EEO, Equal employment opportunity. (EEO) laws enforced by the U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL) Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) prohibit discrimination against job applicants and employees of federal contractors and subcontractors. These laws also require covered employers to engage in affirmative steps to ensure that employees receive EEO regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, and status as an individual with a disability or protected veteran. Recordkeeping will be kept by EEO-1 reports; The Standard Form 100, EEO-1 Report, requires that employers report on the number of employees by race, ethnicity, and gender for each of nine job categories. The EEO-1 Report must be filed annually, not later than September 30. Other documentation needed for the audit includes; 1. An applicant flow log showing the name, race, sex, date of application, job title, interview status and the action taken for all individuals applying for job opportunities; 2. Summary data of external job offers and hires, promotions, resignations, terminations, and layoffs by job group and by sex and minority group identification; 3. Summary data of applicant flow by identifying, at least, total applicants, total minority applicants, and total female applicants for each position; 4.Maintenance of employment applications (not to exceed one year); and 5.Records pertaining to our company’s compensation system. Having I-9 forms on all of our employees will ensure that correct documentation is kept. We will need to make sure that all current employees have a documented I-9 form filled and if we don’t have it, we need to have them fill it out as soon as possible. If the employees cannot provide proper documentation proving they are eligible to work in the United States, we will need to help them obtain correct documentation with good-faith effort or we will have to terminate them until they can provide it. An example of the types of questions OFCCP will ask us about our employees will look like this: * Unique Employee ID number * Gender [1] * Race/Ethnicity [2] * Job Title * Grade * Level * Department * Date of hire (mm/dd/yyyy) * Date of last change in grade/job title (mm/dd/yyyy) * Part-time vs. full-time status for all employees * Exempt vs. non-exempt status * Location * Years of relevant experience * Highest degree attained * Year in which highest degree attained * Rating received at most recent performance evaluation * Market reference system used for the different salaries * Annual base salary or hourly wage for full-time employees during the review period [3] * Hourly wage and number of hours worked during the review period for part-time employees [4] * Other paid allowance, if any, such as commission pay, overtime pay, bonus pay or shift differential [5].

Report each allowance in separate data columns.

CONCLUSION: We will have 30 days to gather all of the information requested, after receiving the letter notify us of the full desk audit. After the audit has been conducted, we will be eligible for another audit in two years. This is why having correct policies and procedures in place can save us a lot of headache in the future, if we can keep good employee records. All executive members are going to have to contribute in helping the company complete this audit, the human resource department has already downsized to two employees and there is no way they can do it themselves in this amount of time. It is in the company’s best interest that all executive members participate to avoid any huge fines or further lawsuits. And by performing this internal self-audit, we can follow all the steps necessary with EEO and AAP so we can find the problems and fix them before we are legally liable. Unfortunately, most of these issues and concerns could have been avoided if our legal and ethics manager did not get terminated. This is a good example of why the company should have kept better records, because if only one employee knows the information, and that employee is no longer employed, than the information is lost. We need to do a better job as a company in recordkeeping.

Sources:

Biddle Consulting Group. OFCCP Audit (2013). Retrieved from http://affirmativeaction.com/tag/ofccp-audit/

Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (Revised January 4, 2002) Retrieved from http://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/aa.htm