EEOC Report Finds Rise in Compliance with Antidiscrimination Law at Federal Agencies
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) published a report late last month that showed some progress among (Equal Employment Opportunity) EEO directors reporting directly to federal agencies heads. The Elijah E. Cummings Federal Employee Antidiscrimination Act of 2020 (P.L. 116–283) requires EEO Directors report directly to agency heads..
Prior to the introduction of a mandate, the EEOC long held that a direct reporting structure, where the head of the agency supervises the person with day-to-day control of the agency’s EEO program, must be established to maintain an effective and compliant EEO program. The Cummings Act was the first statute to mandate a direct reporting structure in the federal government.
The EEOC’s latest report provides an update on compliance with the mandate. The report largely relies on evidence gathered via various sources, including agency-submitted Management Directive 715 (MD-715) and Form 462 reports from fiscal year (FY) 2019 and FY 2020. The data was further categorized by agency size to indicate trends in compliance.
Report results found among small and mid-size federal agencies high levels of compliance with the reporting structure as early as FY19 at 67 percent and 61 percent, respectively. In contrast, 45 percent of large agencies, 36 percent of Cabinet-level agencies, and 23 percent of National Guard Offices reported compliance.
In FY 2020, the levels of compliance increased across the board for all agencies, except the mid-sized category which fell to 56 percent from 61 percent. Further, small agencies continued the trends of attaining the highest levels of compliance at 76 percent. With these results, the EEOC indicated that the practices of small agencies could be a model for compliance among other agencies.
Similar trends in compliance were also identified in FY21 with small agencies achieving the greatest levels of compliance at 47 percent. By comparison, only 33 percent of mid-sized, 36 percent of large, and 29 percent of Cabinet-level agencies reported compliance. The amenability among National Guard offices dropped 10 percent to 13 percent complied.
“Although compliance with the direct reporting mandate needs improvement, this study shows a good start has been made in improving structures to increase equal opportunity in the federal workplace,” stated Carlton Hadden, Director of the EEOC’s Office of Federal Operations (OFO), “I am hopeful that this increase will be a continuing trend and that all agencies will come into compliance with the law.”
To bolster the report, the EEOC also conducted a survey of EEO directors to obtain perspectives from these officials on the impact of a direct reporting structure upon their programs.
Ultimately, the EEOC received 214 responses from 154 agencies and found:
Most respondents from agencies with a direct reporting structure stated that it had either very positively or positively impacted their agency’s EEO program;
Respondents from agencies with a direct reporting structure maintained frequent communication with their agency head, with nearly 47 percent reporting daily or weekly communication, 21 percent biweekly, and 28 percent monthly;
At agencies without a direct reporting structure, 41 percent of respondents cited leadership reluctance as the main obstacle to establishing that structure at their agencies.
