The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has launched a help desk to answer questions about Component 2 pay data now required to be filed by employers as part of the annual EEO-1 Report. The EEOC also has posted new information and guidance on the Component 2 report filing.

The new Component 2 pay data reporting requires employers to submit hours of service and W-2 data on their employees as part of their EEO-1 Reports. The help desk is in place to answer questions from employers about submitting 2019 EEO-1 reports containing pay data for the 2017 and 2018 reporting years by the deadline of September 30, 2019. The help desk consists of:

The Component 2 EEO-1 Online Filing System data collection instrument is now available for all filers using the online portal: https://eeoccomp2.norc.org/. System login information is being sent to employers via USPS letter and email this week.

The EEOC has announced that the Component 2 EEO-1 Upload File Layout Specifications and an accompanying Excel File for 2017 and 2018 are now available in the More Info and Additional References section. The agency says that the secure file upload function and validation process is expected to be available by mid-August 2019. The online form is web-based. Data is transferred over the internet using encryption to ensure data privacy in the transfer.

The EEOC has contracted with the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), a non-partisan research institution at the University of Chicago, to develop a system to collect the new pay data information.

The EEO-1 Report should be completed by private companies with 100 or more employees. Federal contractors and first-tier subcontractors with at least 50 employees and with at least $50,000 in contracts should file the EEO-1 Report, as should financial institutions and government depositories with 50 employees or more. Private employers with less than 100 employees may also be required to file if their association or common ownership with another company results in the joint entities having a collective total of 100 employees.

To determine if your company is required to file an EEO-1 Report, click here.

With the revised EEO-1 form finalized, employers will need to act quickly to assess their data gathering capabilities if they want to meet the September 30 deadline with accurate information. Many third-party vendors can aid in the management of data quality to aid in this initiative.

To learn more about achieving pay equity, click here.