The HRC was contacted by a law firm partner about a client in crisis. The client was a long-term Federal subcontractor with 350 employees. They had just received notice of an OFCCP site audit and demand for submission of their current Affirmative Action Plan and Salary Analysis within the next thirty days. The firm had neither an affirmative action plan nor a submitted plan for the past ten years, after their last audit. And recently, one of their regional competitors had just received a significant fine by OFCCP. Additionally, this firm had not been compiling the data upon which to base an affirmative action plan so the data had to be pulled from hardcopy files.
To constrain the client’s cost, we rapidly assembled a team including graduate students to go through employee files to gather data. Meanwhile, payroll data was examined, assessed, corrected and analyzed for accurate analysis. Employee data was compiled and analyzed to develop all AAP reports, and then cross-checked for consistency and accuracy. Simultaneously, we conducted a facility tour and made recommendations for immediate improvement. The plan was written with an outreach strategy created in partnership with the HR Director and President. The Plan and the Salary Analysis were submitted within the required thirty days. Comments from the OFCCP auditors were that they “were impressed with the caliber of the Plan – it was laid out the way we like it.”
Facility renovations were completed prior to the on-site audit. The HRC educated and prepared the HR Director for the on-site audit including likely questions from the auditors regarding the Plan. The result was a Conciliation Agreement with no fines and mandatory semi-annual reporting. The firm’s HR Director was then able to update the Plan with minimal help from The HRC.