The instructions for completion of the EEO-1 Report compel employers to report on ALL employees by race/ethnicity and gender. Since the government cannot compel your employees to disclose this information, the employer who doesn’t have it is required to make a “visual identification” of race/ethnicity and gender, a very uncomfortable task for most employers. In my experience most employees will voluntarily disclose this information. The problem with the responses the employer receives during PRE-employment is three-fold: 1) Many people simply won’t tell you. Despite an employer’s covenant NOT TO USE this information in making any employment decision – AND YOU MAY NOT! – many job seekers simply don’t believe it. And at least with respect to questions about “disability”, if not all such information, job seekers/applicants may consider this to be highly personal information and disclosing it – particularly early in the process – not worth the risk that the employer will misuse the information. 2) The timing of the pre-employment survey also matters. If the employer solicits this information at the very beginning of its selection process it may get some responses from job seekers who, it turns out, don’t meet the advertised “Basic Qualifications” – information, frankly, most contractors would rather not have because IF they have it they have to provide it to the agency if the OFCCP were to ask, even for people who don’t meet the definition of “Internet Applicant”. If the employer doesn’t solicit the information until it must – i.e., from all “Internet Applicants” only, the employer is then faced with going back to people it has already eliminated from consideration to ask them to disclose. It’s expected that response rates from that group would be even lower and, possibly, less accurate if provided. 3) Responses from individuals prior to employment are more likely to be incomplete (e.g., disclosing gender but not race/ethnicity or vice versa) or untruthful. If the employer’s system doesn’t “lock” this element of the job seeker’s profile, individuals may even change their responses from one requisition to another – or one reporting period to another! [ESB NOTE: Because contractors rely on these data in preparing reports and analysis for the OFCCP most would really be unhappy to learn that the David Willoughby-MacDonald they reported as White in one analysis shows up as Hispanic in another! I strongly recommend that no job seeker/"Internet Applicant" be permitted to change this information once it is submitted the first time.] Consequently, you may – OR MAY NOT – have the race/ethnicity, gender, veteran and disability information on all new hires that you think you have. And you need it! Further, while not specifically required to “survey again” for race/ethnicity and gender, you really SHOULD do so…and you might as well do it at the same time as you do the REQUIRED invitation/survey for veteran status and disability -- at the POST-OFFER stage. Since 2014 when the OFCCP introduced the concept of “goals/utilization” and of measurement of outreach efforts to the Section 503 and VEVRAA regulations, contractors are similarly regulated with respect to both pre-employment “invitations” to disclose such information and with respect to POST-OFFER solicitations of this information. I encourage you to look for helpful information from the OFCCP in its FAQs on these issues. See Questions 7-9 in the OFCCP’s FAQs for Section 503: https://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/faqs/503_faq.htm#Q10 and See Questions 6-7 in the OFCCP’s FAQs for VEVVRA: https://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/faqs/VEVRAA_faq.htm#Q7

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.