This is the second article in a series on OFCCP’s proposed audit practice changes. See here for our article on OFCCP’s intended updates to the standard “Supply and Service” scheduling letter. This article reviews OFCCP’s proposals for “Focused Reviews” and “Compliance Checks.” We encourage you to participate in the public comment period concerning these changes before it closes on June 7th.
The OFCCP announced its intention to perform “Focused Reviews” in Directive 2018-04, released in August 2018. “Focused” reviews will be limited to only one of your programs, your E.O. 11246 race/gender, Section 503, or VEVRAA plan. OFCCP has not yet released a Scheduling Letter for E.O. 11246 plans. The OFCCP says that the reviews will function as a forum for best practices. They still want a lot of data.
The OFCCP is kicking off the Focused Reviews with Section 503. It included 500 of these reviews in the recent CSAL. Apparently to help the OFCCP get the disability-Focused Reviews going, OMB reviewed and approved a Section 503 Focused Review Scheduling Letter last fall. Like the standard Scheduling Letter, it expires on June 30, 2019, but will remain in force until a new Section 503 Focused Review Scheduling Letter is approved.
All Focused Reviews will be onsite. This year’s Section 503 reviews will be at corporate headquarters. To give you a bit of a breather, however, while OFCCP will start sending Scheduling Letters on May 9, it will hold off on actual onsite visits until on or after September 1. Cold comfort, perhaps, given how much work it takes to prepare for any onsite.
Both Section 503 and VEVRAA Focused Review detail must be submitted electronically within 30 days of receipt of the Scheduling Letter.
The Section 503 and VEVRAA Focused Reviews ask for the same types of data, including:
The government estimates it will take 10.5 hours to collect and prepare this information for submission for a Section 503 or VEVRAA Focused Review. Do you agree? Do you agree that the Agency should include complex plan and compensation detail in what it advertises as a quick and painless review?
Compliance Checks have not been used for more than ten years, so they feel new. In the past, contractors would provide “progress to goals” reports, “examples of accommodation” and outreach detail. The reviews were onsite, but the OFCCP commonly spent much more time traveling to the facility under review than the 20-30 minutes it took to complete the Compliance Check.
The OFCCP promises that the reviews remain be a cursory records check. Onsites are optional.
The OFCCP now wants you to submit all three “written AAPs” and to identify which accommodations were granted or denied. The outreach requirement remains the same as before – at least as written (“Examples of job advertisements, including listings with state employment services”). But given Director Leen’s insistence on the importance of outreach, I would do a thorough self-analysis. For example, be ready to tell the Agency what additional outreach to community-based organizations you have done on your own (information you should be logging, preferably in your vendor’s outreach tool). Better to be ready.
If you maintain construction plans, you will have to provide personnel activity and payroll data. Construction contractors must also provide the transactions analyses from their veterans and disability plans unless you work exclusively on federally-assisted programs.
