Your company is known by the company it keeps. (Or, Am I my company's keeper?)
May 12, 2011 11:14 PM Subscribe
In the US, how does the choice (or not) to disclose Equal Employment Opportunity Act information such as gender and race affect a company's overall hiring processes?
This question isn't about how an individual's application may be handled. It's about how the body of disclosed Equal Employment Opportunity Commission information affects a company's practices.
For simplicity and clarity, let's say 1000 people, all self-identifying as members of the same race (or all of whom decline to disclose), apply for 100 jobs at a company. Half of the applicants are women and half are men. Let's also say that these 100 jobs, when filled, will increase the total number of employees at the company from 100 to 200. Finally, let's say that although the jobs are functionally gender-neutral, all of the current employees are male, and that this fact has been previously identified by the EEOC as a problem.
Now, suppose that all 500 of the male applicants opted to disclose their gender in the EEO questions, while only 100 of the females did. Would the bare fact of an apparent 5:1:4 male/female/undisclosed ratio in job applicants be in any way actionable? What if the disclosure situation were reversed (1:5:4)?
If the disclosed information doesn't affect hiring at this level, at what point and in what manner does it get factored into any actions?
Or, is the question itself incorrect by dint of predicating upon one or more incorrect assumptions?
This question isn't about how an individual's application may be handled. It's about how the body of disclosed Equal Employment Opportunity Commission information affects a company's practices.
For simplicity and clarity, let's say 1000 people, all self-identifying as members of the same race (or all of whom decline to disclose), apply for 100 jobs at a company. Half of the applicants are women and half are men. Let's also say that these 100 jobs, when filled, will increase the total number of employees at the company from 100 to 200. Finally, let's say that although the jobs are functionally gender-neutral, all of the current employees are male, and that this fact has been previously identified by the EEOC as a problem.
Now, suppose that all 500 of the male applicants opted to disclose their gender in the EEO questions, while only 100 of the females did. Would the bare fact of an apparent 5:1:4 male/female/undisclosed ratio in job applicants be in any way actionable? What if the disclosure situation were reversed (1:5:4)?
If the disclosed information doesn't affect hiring at this level, at what point and in what manner does it get factored into any actions?
Or, is the question itself incorrect by dint of predicating upon one or more incorrect assumptions?
I think the problem with your question is that you assume a degree of consistency which doesn't exist.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:19 PM on May 12, 2011
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:19 PM on May 12, 2011
Response by poster: If that's the case and I therefore can't get a specific answer, I'd nevertheless still like to get a general picture of what constitutes "normal". Surely some clarity can be gleaned, if only by discarding outliers. Or are we talking true scattershot here?
posted by perspicio at 11:28 PM on May 12, 2011
posted by perspicio at 11:28 PM on May 12, 2011
Sounds like someone's working a law school hypothetical.
Employers aren't allowed to use the information submitted on those sheets in their employment decisions, and most don't. Even if an employer si engaged in some discrimination, it almost certainly won't show up in any way that you can identify from the EEO information. The EEO questions are used by the DOL and EEOC for purely statistical reporting purposes--and pretty loosely at that, as it's all self-reported--and someone trying to sue an employer for gender discrimination isn't going to use the EEO information as evidence.
Furthermore, the EEOC doesn't generally go around initiating enforcement actions on its own initiative. Someone has to complain. And when they do complain, the EEOC probably isn't going to look at the questions submitted by applications on the EEO forms, they're going to conduct an actual investigation.
posted by valkyryn at 2:54 AM on May 13, 2011
Employers aren't allowed to use the information submitted on those sheets in their employment decisions, and most don't. Even if an employer si engaged in some discrimination, it almost certainly won't show up in any way that you can identify from the EEO information. The EEO questions are used by the DOL and EEOC for purely statistical reporting purposes--and pretty loosely at that, as it's all self-reported--and someone trying to sue an employer for gender discrimination isn't going to use the EEO information as evidence.
Furthermore, the EEOC doesn't generally go around initiating enforcement actions on its own initiative. Someone has to complain. And when they do complain, the EEOC probably isn't going to look at the questions submitted by applications on the EEO forms, they're going to conduct an actual investigation.
posted by valkyryn at 2:54 AM on May 13, 2011
Best answer: I just want to clear up a couple of assumptions that I think are showing up.
One, not every company needs to keep EEOC data, my company only started keeping it because we became a government contractor.
Two, The sheet was removed from the application, or electronically the data was not displayed to the hiring manager so it couldn't affect hiring decisions specifically. Of course the hiring manager would eventually see the applicant if they were brought in for an interview.
Three, if you don't disclose the data we guess. We are told to guess. So even if only 100 of the females disclosed they were female we would still input data for the other 400, most likely based on name. So yeah we'd get some wrong (any woman named Jordan or something probably) but the ratio wouldn't be nearly 5:1:4 because those "4" wouldn't exist.
Four, we (and many other companies that I had talked to) didn't keep data on every single person that applied for a job. We defined "applying for a job" as filling out the application and we only gave the application to people we actually interviewed, which also makes it a lot easier to guess on race or gender.
posted by magnetsphere at 8:59 AM on May 13, 2011
One, not every company needs to keep EEOC data, my company only started keeping it because we became a government contractor.
Two, The sheet was removed from the application, or electronically the data was not displayed to the hiring manager so it couldn't affect hiring decisions specifically. Of course the hiring manager would eventually see the applicant if they were brought in for an interview.
Three, if you don't disclose the data we guess. We are told to guess. So even if only 100 of the females disclosed they were female we would still input data for the other 400, most likely based on name. So yeah we'd get some wrong (any woman named Jordan or something probably) but the ratio wouldn't be nearly 5:1:4 because those "4" wouldn't exist.
Four, we (and many other companies that I had talked to) didn't keep data on every single person that applied for a job. We defined "applying for a job" as filling out the application and we only gave the application to people we actually interviewed, which also makes it a lot easier to guess on race or gender.
posted by magnetsphere at 8:59 AM on May 13, 2011
Response by poster: Thanks, magnetsphere - that added to my knowledge of how the data is collected and used.
posted by perspicio at 3:57 PM on May 13, 2011
posted by perspicio at 3:57 PM on May 13, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by perspicio at 11:18 PM on May 12, 2011