Plan Settings
KEY TOPICS:
- Plan Settings (Adverse Impact, Monitoring, and Desk Audit Analysis calculations)
- Availability Calculation Settings (Census data source, Statistics Settings, and quick factor weighting options)
Important Note: The default Plan settings are sufficient for most contractors developing AAPs. Because balanceAAP uses the most current OFCCP statistical settings and thresholds available at the time of development, changes should only be made after careful consideration or discussion with a consultant or attorney.
Reset to Default
At any time, the default settings can be restored by clicking the [Reset to Default] button in the menu header bar.Adjust Adverse Impact Settings
The Adverse Impact menu displays thresholds for statistical significance, which will impact reporting displays in this area. To make changes to the Adverse Impact menu , enter the desired value into the field, and click [Save] at the bottom of the page. A checkbox at the bottom of the menu allows you to apply a threshold for determining the favored group when protected and unprotected classes are compared.Below is a description of the underlying methods:
Adverse Impact compares the selection rate of one group to the selection rate of another. balanceAAP determines the significance of adverse impact with two methods:
- Standard deviation 2.0 or greater is considered statistically significant.
- Fisher’s Exact Test 025 or lower is considered statistically significant.
By default, job groups containing less than 30 records will use the Fisher’s Exact Test.
An approaching significance threshold is also set to provide a warning in reports when adverse impact for a group is near the significance point.
To make changes to any of these values, enter the desired value into the field, and click [Save] at the bottom of the page.
Adverse Impact compares the selection rate of one group to the selection rate of another. By default, minorities (as a whole or by individual race) are compared to whites, and women are compared to men. The default race and gender for comparison can be changed by selecting them from the drop-down lists.
By selecting All Other Classes, you can compare one minority class against all other races, not just whites. This option is only useful when running adverse impact calculations for individual minority groups. For example, if you were running adverse impact on Blacks, their selection rate would be compared to the combined selection rate of Whites, Asians, Hispanics, and Pacific Islanders. Also, since there are only two standard genders, this option has no effect on gender adverse impact calculations.
By selecting Favored Class by Group, adverse impact will be calculated by comparing the Favored Class in each job group to the other classes. For example, if Asians are determined to be the favored class, adverse impact will be calculated for Whites, Blacks, and all other individual race codes.
Click Save at the bottom to save any changes.
Monitoring
By default, goal attainment (determining if your company met the previous year’s goals) is based on the new hires and promotions that occurred during the personnel action date range. These calculations can be seen in the Goal Attainment report.Depending on how your company defines new hires, promotions and transfers, you may have the need to include transfers, or not include promotions or new hires, in this calculation. Use the check boxes to select which tables should be used for goal attainment. Click Save at the bottom to save this change.
Desk Audit
The Desk Audit report replicates the analysis used by the OFCCP to determine if a salary audit is warranted. This report is a preliminary comparison which compares the salaries of protected employees vs. the salaries of non-protected employees in each job group.
Include groups marked as No Comparator?
Groups in which there are no comparators to a class (i.e. the group contains only minorities or only non-minorities) are typically excluded from the calculations. They can be included by checking the Yes, include groups marked as no comparator option.
Percentage of Acceptable Difference
By default, the Percentage of Acceptable Difference is set at 2%. This means if the average salaries for the protected and non-protected classes in a job group differ by 2% or more, the class with the higher average is considered favored in that job group.
The OFCCP flags job groups when:
These settings default to the current OFCCP standards used when deciding whether further investigation will be conducted by the OFCCP. The OFCCP will typically conduct further investigation of a job group when the following is true: •1. When the number of protected employees in a group is 30 or more •2. When the percentage of the protected class, in groups where the non protected group is favored, is 10% or more
The default settings in BALANCEaap reflect the current values used by the OFCCP. These values can be changed to reflect changes the OFCCP may make in the future.
Ratio of Protected vs. Non-protected Employees
After determining the favored class for each job group, the ratio of protected vs. non-protected employees in groups favoring the opposing class is calculated. This is another case whereby the OFCCP will typically schedule a salary audit if this ratio is greater than 3.0.
Again, this default setting in BALANCEaap reflects the current value used by the OFCCP. This value can be changed to reflect changes the OFCCP may make in the future.
Click Save at the bottom to save your changes.