United States Department of Labor OASP - Employment Law Guide Update

The U.S. Department of Labor today announced the availability of an updated version of its popular Employment Law Guide, an online publication that describes the major employment laws administered by the department.  The Guide helps the public — workers and employers — understand many of the laws affecting the workplace.  It helps small businesses develop wage, benefit, safety and health, and nondiscrimination policies and benefits employees and employee representatives who need information about worker rights and responsibilities under federal employment laws.
The Employment Law Guide is a companion to the department’s FirstStep overview advisor, an online system that allows employers to quickly and easily determine which federal employment laws apply to them by answering a few simple questions about relevant variables.  Together, the updated Employment Law Guide and the FirstStepoverview advisor offer employers the information they need to ensure safe and fair workplace policies and practices.  Both are available at http://www.dol.gov/elaws orhttp://www.dol.gov/compliance.

Do You Know Your AAP Score?

As your AAP year begins to wind down do you know your AAP score?  Does your management team know the facility AAP score?  Hopefully, you've been actively involved in tracking all of the key personnel activity throughout the AAP year.  Each individual applicant, hire, promotion, demotion, transfer, job posting, job vacancy, suspension, disciplinary action, compensation action, and, termination statistically become part of your AAP Scorecard.  The sum of all these personnel activities when comparing the protected groups vs the non-protected groups determine the final analysis of Impact Ratios and Standard Deviations.  Impact Ratios below .80 with Standard Deviations of 2.0 or higher are statistical indicators that Systemic Discrimination may be occurring unlikely by chance.  This is definitely something the OFCCP would most likely require much detailed information be provided for and most likely would schedule and an onsite visit for further investigation.  A good self audit system is a good way to be aware of early on in being alerted to these type trends.  This gives you the opportunity to address potential problem areas as they begin to develop and manage them in a positive direction.  Making "Good Faith" to address problem areas is what the OFCCP expects to see you doing.  It's critical to account for and measure all the "Good Faith" efforts being accomplished in your location.  This will clearly demonstrate to the OFCCP that your are in fact in charge and effectively managing your locations Affirmative Action Plan.

AAP Preparation & Audits in the Beginning & NOW

In the early days of Affirmative Action Plan preparation and audits there was no desktop computers, no internet, no email, no blogs, and no website resources. It was an overwhelming amount of work to do with huge mountains of printouts on green bar paper and not a clue where to begin. It was easy to tell yourself with all the different hats you had to wear as an HR Professional you just needed to wait until you had time to sort through and figure it out. The big problem with this was you never really had the time so you kept putting it off and putting it off.   In reality in the beginning we never took the time to make it important and give it the time we should have. 

Unfortunately today’s Human Resource Professional falls into that crisis of being overwhelmed, feeling helpless and making the same mistake of putting it off and waiting until you have more time. With the economy of today and companies closing plants, reducing workforces, cutting budgets, combining jobs, increasing workloads, reducing pay, and slashing benefits. Today’s HR Professional is having to administer all of these negative actions and in most instances while there on staff is being reduced. When this type of trauma erupts inside a work location it becomes the top priority to maintain operations, keep morale positive, and don't let performance in any area slip.  

While all these hectic things keep happening your business unit the Compliance Clock keeps ticking. Applicants, hires, promotions from, promotions to, involuntary terminations, voluntary terminations, placement rate goals for minorities, placement rate goals for females, and don't forget all the compensations actions that have occurred. Good AAP management is like SAFETY, it does not happen by accident.  It requires constant data maintenance, periodic detailed audit data analysis, a clearly defined action plan with measures of what needs to be accomplished, and solid communication to your business unit decision makers on what the score is.

Quick Steps Inc. is a resource that can provide positive solutions for today’s Human Resource Professional.  We can provide you with the formal data management, data analysis, and detailed data reporting needed to have a high quality effective Affirmative Action Plan program in place to meet the compliance requirements you will have.