EEO Compliance Are You Spending Most of Your Time Defending Yourself Against Complaints? Having Problems Ensuring Fairness in Your Selection Process?

In today's "litigation happy" environment it is critical that your organization's selection, promotion, training and termination programs are in compliance with EEO guidelines. The following provides an overview of key EEO guidelines and Competency Management Incorporated's (CMI) related experience.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended by the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 and the Civil Rights Act of 1991, is the major federal law prohibiting discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Title VII and the following Acts are administered by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and enforced by the EEOC and the Courts.

• Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, prohibits discrimination in employment against individuals forty years of age and older.
• Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities. This Act requires employers to provide reasonable accommodation to qualified individuals with a disability unless doing so would impose an undue hardship on the business.

Typical awards and settlements are in the millions of dollars. You may have seen the headline "$2.1 million settlement in PUC age bias suit" with regard to the EEOC versus a western state Public Utilities Commission. The lead attorney for the complainants was quoted as stating:

"The bottom line is that it's [the PUC selection process] going to be a significantly different, more job related testing process monitored and developed by professionals."

Similarly you possibly read the Business Week article "The Swat Team of Bias Litigation" which mentioned the $107 million settlement in a class action Title VII case against a large supermarket chain.

We are the organization selected by the PUC and approved by the EEOC to design, implement and monitor the new process referred to by the plaintiff's attorney. We also helped the supermarket chain reduce the size of the settlement, and were selected by them, and approved by plaintiffs, to design and implement a Company- wide selection and promotion process.

From the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission DIRECTIVES TRANSMITTAL Number 915.003 4/19/2006
15-IX PROACTIVE PREVENTION

"The following are examples of best practices for employers - proactive measures designed to reduce the likelihood of Title VII violations and to address impediments to equal employment opportunity.
General

Develop a strong EEO policy that is embraced by the CEO and top executives, train managers and employees on its contents, enforce it, and hold company managers accountable.
Make sure decisions are transparent (to the extent feasible) and documented. The reasons for employment decisions should be well explained to affected persons. Make sure managers maintain records for at least the statutorily-required periods.

Recruit, hire, and promote with EEO in mind, by implementing practices designed to widen and diversify the pool of candidates considered for employment openings, including openings in upper-level management.
Monitor for EEO by conducting self-analyses to determine whether current employment practices disadvantage people of color, treat them differently, or leave uncorrected the effects of historical discrimination in the company.
Analyze the duties, functions, and competencies relevant to jobs. Then create objective, job-related qualification standards related to those duties, functions, and competencies. Make sure they are consistently applied when choosing among candidates. Identify and remove barriers to EEO - such as word-of-mouth recruiting in a workforce that does not reflect the diversity of the qualified labor market, or employment tests - if they cannot demonstrably be tied to job performance and business necessity.
Develop the potential of employees, supervisors, and executives with EEO in mind, by providing training and mentoring to give workers of all backgrounds the opportunity, skill, experience, and information necessary to perform well, and to ascend to upper-level jobs.(160)
Make sure promotion criteria are made known, and that job openings are communicated to all eligible employees.