The regulations that require federal contractors to develop and maintain a written affirmative action program provides contractors three options for handling establishments with less than 50 employees. 41 CFR § 60-2.1(d)2 Who is included in affirmative action programs states that:
“Employees who work at an establishment where the contractor employs fewer than 50 employees, may be included under any of the following three options: In an affirmative action program which covers just that establishment; in the affirmative action program which covers the location of the personnel function which supports the establishment; or, in the affirmative action program which covers the location of the official to whom they report.“
I am not sure if you have establishments outside of your corporate office that have 50 or more employees in some of the states that you operate in. If you do, you are required to have a standalone AAP for those establishments. The risk you run in rolling up all the other establishments with less than 50 employees into one large AAP at the state level is the “law of large numbers.” There is a greater risk that statistical analysis will show adverse impact the larger your applicant and employee numbers are. So you might end up with a lot of false positives. Granted, you will be able to eventually explain that these are due to job-related differences based on the differences in location, but these will also likely result in longer audits. You might want to take a look at possibly doing Functional Affirmative Action Programs (FAAP). Depending on how your business structure works, you may be able to have 50 FAAPs.You can use this OFCCP audit checklist to ensure you're doing what is required to maintain OFCCP's regulations including VEVRAA, Section 503, and EO 11246. Or request a demo to streamline your compliance and recruiting efforts.