Frequently Asked Questions

If OCR approved the EEOP Report within two years before the date of a new award, the recipient agency does not need to submit another. Instead, the recipient needs to send only a copy of the approval letter for its EEOP Report with a cover letter referencing the new grant number.

The EEOP is effective for a two-year period, commencing with the date of the approval letter from OCR.

No. In analyzing the Underutilization Chart in the EEOP Short-Form, OCR does not use a particular threshold percentage to determine whether a recipient has significant underutilization based on race, national origin, or sex in any of the eight major job categories. It is the responsibility of recipients to determine what they consider significant underutilization. The analysis is highly fact-specific. For example, having a 20 percent underutilization of Asian males in the Skilled Craft job category would be less significant for an employer who has a total of five employees in this job category than for an employer that has 500 employees in the same job category. In the context of analyzing underutilization, recipients should be aware that the OCR does not expect an exact parity between the workforce and the relevant community labor market.

No. Recipients should avoid setting numerical goals for hiring or promoting employees based on race or sex to remedy identified underutilization (e.g., hiring seven American Indian women in the Technicians job category), which is generally impermissible. OCR will return an EEOP Utilization Report that contains quotas with a request for an explanation and a caution to avoid this ordinarily unacceptable remedy.

If a recipient identified significant underutilization of African American women in the professionals job category, the recipient might, for example, write the following objective: "To ensure equal employment opportunities for Black or African American women when our organization fills vacancies that become available in the Professionals job category."

If the recipient has decided that one of its objectives is "to ensure equal opportunities for Black or African American women when our organization fills vacancies that become available in the Professionals job category, "then steps to achieve this objective might include the following:

• Our organization will designate a member of our human resources team to serve as a liaison and outreach coordinator to educational institutions and professional organizations with significant Black or African American women members. In the next 12 months, our organization will contact, at least, the following institutions: Acadia University, Black Women's Professional Association, the Carlton Group, Dynamic Magazine, Eta Sorority, Faith Temple Women's Club, the Good Government Coalition, and Hancock Civic Association.
• Our organization will review all employment organizational data related to the Professional job category to identify any issues that may pose barriers for Black or African American women (e.g., review the records of exit interviews of former employees; examine applicant flow data for recent vacancies; review job posting and advertising practices; determine whether there are in-house career paths; evaluate hiring, retention and attrition rates for particular positions, particular offices, or regions).
  • Based on the internal review of employment data, we will design an action plan within three months of the date of this EEOP to attract more Black or African American professional women. Within 12 months of the date of this EEOP, we will review our action plan and evaluate our progress.

Examples may include the following:

• Notifying applicants, vendors and contractors in writing that the recipient has developed an EEOP Report and that it is available on request for review;
• Posting a copy of the Report on the recipient's public website; and
• Making copies of the Report available in the reading rooms of local public libraries.

xamples may include the following:

• Posting the EEOP Report on the recipient's intranet, an in-house, electronic communication service that only employees can access;
• Placing a copy of the Report in the recipient's policies and procedures manual;
• Posting information on bulletin boards in employee break areas about how to obtain a copy;
• Distributing a copy of the EEOP Report to all of a recipient's supervisors, department heads, or elected officials; and
• Sending electronic and hard copy memoranda to every employee stating that a copy is available on request in the recipient's human resources office.

Yes. You can cut and paste text into any of the online Report's text boxes, if the destination text box can accept the length of the text or number of characters being pasted. You should spell check text before pasting it into a text box, as you will be unable to do so afterwards.

You cannot electronically attach any files (as you might on e-mail) to the online EEOP Report. However, after creating the Report online and printing it out, you may attach hard copies of supplemental materials before sending the signed Report to OCR. In the appropriate text boxes online, you may indicate that you are attaching hard copies of relevant documents to the EEOP Utilization Report by typing, "Please see the attached hard copy document.