On October 17, 2018, BCGi presented a webinar on Developing Job Groups, Determining Labor Areas, and Assigning Census Codes: It Pays to Take a Closer Look. This presentation was designed for both people who may be new to AAP development as well as experienced practitioners.

Below are some of the key highlights:

Job Groups

• A Job Group is an aggregation of jobs that are similar in content, wage and opportunity, and is the basic unit of analysis in an AAP.
• When designing job groups, begin by aligning jobs according to their EEO categories.
• If you are a small employer (i.e., less than 150 employees) you may use the EEO categories as your AAP job groups.
• The regulations do not require job group categories to be a particular size.  So discretion may be used when forming a job group that is large enough to allow for meaningful analysis, but not so large you are combining jobs that are significantly different from one another.
• It is acceptable to have job groups with only a handful of employees or less if that is how many you have in a given EEO category.  For example, if you only have one employee in the Service Workers category, do not combine it with another category for the sole purpose of creating a larger sample size.
• When designing more refined job group categories, you may want to consider aligning positions by specialty/family (e.g., Engineers, Customer Service Reps, Finance, Nursing, etc.) or job level (e.g., Senior, Mid and Entry-Level).
• The structure and composition of the job groups have a direct effect on the calculation of the final availabilities/goals, on the utilization, disparate impact, and compensation analyses.

Availability Analysis

• The Availability Analysis is meant to reflect “who you should have” as a percentage of qualified women and minorities available to work in positions at your organization.
• Two important elements to consider when calculating availability are the Geographic Recruitment Area (“where you recruit from”) and External Source Data (“who is qualified to work at positions in your establishment”).
• In order to accurately create recruitment areas, consider leveraging both a data-driven approach (via an employee or applicant zip code analysis) as well as HR staff that is knowledgeable about the company’s recruitment practices.
• The 2006-2010 EEO Tabulation occupational census data are most commonly used source and is widely accepted by OFCCP.
• There are other external sources that may also provide relevant data, such as the Civilian Labor Force, census data that are Industry-Specific or separated by Earnings, or data on Educational Attainment.
• There are pros and cons to using all external data sources. Evaluate the available data and select the external source – or a combination of them – that most accurately reflects the types of jobs being filled at your organization.

We hope everyone enjoyed the presentation! If you missed it, don’t worry, there are plenty of other great webinars coming up! Please be sure to check the BCGi calendar!