HR Management & Compliance

Filing EEO-1 Reports: Employer Questions and Answers

With the deadline—September 30—for filing EEO-1 reports approaching, employers have a lot of questions to ensure they’re being completed correctly. For example, what location should remote employees be grouped under? Can a company’s subsidiaries be included with the corporate EEO-1 report if they operate out of the same location? Should a company include foreign-based employees in total employee counts?

In a recent BLR webinar, Richele K. Taylor answered these questions and more. Check out the answers here.

Q. When determining whether you’re single or multi-establishment for the purposes of your EEO-1 report, how do you categorize the sales people who work in other states, not at corporate headquarters, but do not have an office in the state they work in?

A.That is a great question. I usually take the sales force and roll them into corporate, where it usually makes sense if there is a person they report to at the corporate site. If you have a person they report to at another site, you could consider including them with that site instead. You want to roll them into where they would naturally fall with your reporting scheme. Some companies roll them into the location where they were hired from.

Q. If a company has multiple subsidiaries, and the principle company is subject to EEO-1 reporting, can the subsidiary headcounts be included in the principle company’s report if they have their corporate offices all at the same location?

A.It can. If there are subsidiaries that are all located at the same company headquarters, it should be fine. However, that answer may depend on the specific details of the situation.

Generally, a subsidiary will want to file a second report, even if you’re at the same location, because you want to maintain separate identities. As such, even though it may be easier to include them all together in the EEO-1 report, you’ll probably want to report them as different companies for other reasons.

For example, if one of the subsidiaries has a federal contract, it would be reported as a separate entity and you would not want to include the main entity in your affirmative action plan. From a legal perspective, you usually want to keep them separate, but that’s the type of question that is very fact-specific.

Q. We are a group of 8 construction-related companies with common ownership. Each company has its own employer identification number (EIN). Does each EIN file their EEO-1 report separately? Or can they be combined as a multi-establishment EEO-1 report, regardless of the number of employees at each site?

A.You will have separate reports for each EIN. The separate locations are surely for other reasons, such as taxes or other legal purposes. As such, you’ll not want to combine them for this purpose and treat them as only one entity. If you’re a company that uses part of your corporate name in each company, each one is still separate (that’s why they’ve got separate EINs). You may have a multi-establishments within one or more portions of the company (if one EIN has more than one establishment), but each EIN would need its own report.

Q. Are IT employees considered “technicians” for the job categories required on the EEO-1 report?

A.IT professionals are usually considered professionals, unless they’re primarily just answering routine calls and questions. Most of your high-level IT are going to be included in professional categories. You can look at the identification booklet to see whether a particular position should be a technician or professional.

Q. What is the reporting requirement for a Canadian-owned company? We have a corporate office in Canada and one in the US. The majority of our manufacturing locations are in the US. How do we address Canadian versus US operations and employees?

A.If your operations are in the US, it will depend. In the US, you will need a US reporting mechanism for those locations, but not for the ones in Canada. It will depend on your structure as to how you would list it on the report. If you have multiple locations in the US, then you’ll be subject to the requirements based on how you’re set up for doing business in the US. The Canadian headquarters would not be in the report, but the US ones would. There could be more to this question—which will depend on the specifics of your situation.

For more information on filing an EEO-1 report, order the webinar recording of “EEO-1 Reporting Deadline: HR’s Step-by-Step Guide to Ensuring Compliance.” To register for a future webinar, visit http://store.blr.com/events/webinars.

Attorney Richele K. Taylor is Of Counsel with the law firm of Fisher & Phillips LLP. She has successfully represented employers in state and federal courts, and before administrative agencies on a variety of issues, such as Title VII, the FMLA, ADEA, breach of contract and wrongful termination claims.

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