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Upcoming Webinar: Selection Process Challenges Retailers Are Facing Ramping Up in a Post-COVID World

December 9, 2020 By Matt Nusbaum

BCGi presents, “Selection Process Challenges Retailers Are Facing Ramping Up in a Post-COVID World” in conjunction with TestGenius.

With COVID-19 having forced retailers to either shut down or to operate under new rules as “essential retailers,” the industry faces an unprecedented level of uncertainty. What is certain is that the EEOC and DOL are still monitoring to ensure that fair hiring, promotion, and compensation are taking place. While much focus recently has been on technological improvements to meet consumer’s rapidly changing buying practices, an often overlooked and understated focus is the retail employees themselves and the selection of those employees. Whether you are looking to restaff after a prolonged closure or are an “essential retailer” that has continued to staff during this pandemic join us to learn more about:

Status of retailers as federal contractors
Pre-hire and promotional selection fairness
Revamping selection for new roles in response to COVID-19
Maintaining fairness and defensibility in the selection processes
Benefits of using validated selection tools

Date/Time: December 15, 2020 (11 am Pacific / 1 pm Eastern)

Register Today:
https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/2828303857743552269

Why Sticking to the Basics of Compliance Only Gets You to the Starting Line

December 9, 2020 By Matt Nusbaum

Most regulatory compliance efforts work like this: You receive a list of requirements and then systematically check the boxes until you are “compliant.” The hard work comes at the beginning.

With Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and Affirmative Action (AA) compliance, though, that’s not the case. These regulations also come with boxes to check — displaying posters and policies, running reports, conducting analysis, etc. But even when those requirements are met, companies are still only getting started.

With EEO/AA, you are ultimately judged by your level of compliance. In short, what you do with all of those reports and analyses after they are run. For instance, large federal contractors must create Affirmative Action Plans (AAPs) detailing how they will recruit and hire people from marginalized groups. The AAP may be perfectly compliant on paper, but a company could face a significant settlement or damage to its reputation if everything isn’t equally perfect in practice.

This is not a hypothetical risk. At the start of 2020, The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission collected a $20.5 million settlement from a life insurance company accused of discriminatory practices. This company probably had all the required posters hanging on the walls and assumed that was enough to stay compliant; that assumption led to disastrous consequences because minimum compliance proved inadequate. Compliance practitioners and company leadership must understand that EEO and AA both require proactive, ongoing efforts.

Setting New Compliance Priorities

When the level of compliance is what matters, compliance practitioners (usually in the HR department) must continuously analyze conditions inside and outside the organization while adjusting their compliance efforts accordingly.

The present tells us why. Companies have been eager to show their support for the Black Lives Matter movement, but vague promises aren’t enough. Companies can begin to make the meaningful, quantifiable progress that activists and the puarge are now requesting by simply committing to EEO and AA regulations.

After all, an AAP is explicitly a plan for creating a more diverse and inclusive workplace. It’s where the rubber meets the road in terms of dismantling systemic racism and building the diverse organizations of the future. EEO rules work similarly to make organizations comprehensively more inclusive.

Putting the focus on compliance — rather than PR, marketing, or other “outward” facing efforts — has huge upsides that compliance practitioners should be highlighting in the C-suite and beyond. Doubling the amount of money a company spends on EEO and AA compliance might seem significant, but it represents only a small fraction of what a serious infraction would cost. It’s a smart investment in prevention.

Further, any company increasing its level of compliance signals a sincere commitment to the issues shaping our society. People don’t want platitudes; they want the sort of meaningful change that EEO and AA aim to engineer within organizations. By making strides to become more diverse, companies set themselves apart from competitors that only pay lip service to the issues people care about.

Treating compliance as an ongoing effort has immense upsides, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Good intentions can get lost in a labyrinth of details, and competing priorities leave little time to focus on compliance training for employees. Despite those obstacles, companies that reset their compliance priorities always become stronger and more diverse.

Looking for a partner that can help take your compliance efforts to the next level? See what makes BCGi training different by viewing a 45-second clip of one of our training modules!

How to Gain Executive Buy-In for Your Compliance Needs

December 1, 2020 By Matt Nusbaum

It’s common for executives to ignore, underestimate, or pay lip service to Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and Affirmative Action (AA) regulations. Unfortunately, many feel it’s easier this way.

Taking compliance regulations seriously means actively looking for problems, bringing them to light, and dealing with them directly — the antithesis of the traditional business approach to mitigating potential legal exposure. AA and EEO compliance, specifically, means confronting systemic racism and implicit bias aggressively at a moment when both matters are hot-button issues. No company wants to be discriminatory, but few want to confess publicly to finding instances of those problems in their operation — especially senior leadership desperate to avoid bad PR.

Ignoring AA/EEO compliance seems like the path of least resistance, but any compliance officer can tell you that ignorance of the rules isn’t a sound strategy. Furthermore, any real efforts to increase and encourage diversity in the workplace must have executive buy-in to have any hope of succeeding. Actual change comes from the top,but it’s up to compliance officers to demonstrate the benefits of a compliance program.

The Business Case for Diversity and Inclusion

All explanations for why executive buy-in is often lacking with regard to diversity and inclusion boils down to one thing: the business case. If executives make something a priority, it’s typically because they see some advantage in acting fast or some risk in doing nothing. With diversity and inclusion, it’s harder to see how aggressive action or serious investment fit into the business strategy.

At least, that’s the assumption. Leaders think it’s impossible to meaningfully quantify the amount of money and heartache that could be saved by implementing strong AA/EEO compliance programs and not being cited for violations or having to settle discrimination claims. But that’s objectively false.

The Department of Labor publishes all financial settlements it collects from companies that violate EEO and AA regulations. In 2019 alone, the agency collected more than $40 million in settlements from companies that discriminated based on race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status — $16 million more than it had ever collected before. In this way, executives can clearly see the cost of neglecting AA/EEO compliance. Less quantifiable but potentially even more costly is the brand damage of being publicly identified as a discriminatory company.

To put the risk of downplaying EEO/AA regulations into perspective, consider the story of a client I recently worked with that chose to furlough its EEO compliance department at the outset of COVID-19 — despite an ongoing DOL audit. The company assumed its in-house counsel and an outside attorney could handle things without incident. On the contrary, a lack of experience led to a whole raft of damages and triggered years of extra monitoring by the DOL. The company stands to spend at least$1 million over the next five years to correct this mistake, which was entirely caused by a lack of executive buy-in around the importance of strict compliance.

This is an extreme example of a common attitude: that compliance is secondary. If companies want to have any hope of avoiding expensive damages and irreparable harm to their reputations, this attitude needs to change.

Making Compliance a Top-Down Priority

One way to improve executive buy-in is to make someone in the C-suite responsible for diversity and inclusion efforts. Having a “chief diversity officer” sitting at the table ensures those considerations factor into every major decision the company makes.

In conjunction with professional compliance officers and the legal department, that executive can begin to make the case that diversity in the workplace is a priority. They can point to mountains of anecdotal evidence showing that diverse organizations attract better talent, produce more innovation, and enjoy a healthier culture. Advocates can also use the argument outlined above to make the business case to executives unconvinced by the “soft” benefits of a compliance program. The right approach should highlight every advantage and address every objection. When done correctly, an EEO/AA program is one of the best tools a company has to mitigate its potential legal exposure with regard to employment discrimination. A strong case can and should be made that a healthy EEO/AA program provides a broader, stronger base from which other departments can grow their revenue contributions with diverse talent, fresh ideas, and a culture that encourages innovation. What executive wouldn’t want that?

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