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Glossary of AAP Terms

Affirmative Action Plan

From the Code of Federal Regulations 41 Section 60-2.10:

“An affirmative action program is a management tool designed to ensure equal employment opportunity. ... Effective affirmative action programs also include internal auditing and reporting systems as a means of measuring the contractor's progress toward achieving the workforce that would be expected in the absence of discrimination.”

Accordingly, an Affirmative Action plan, prepared annually, consists of statistics and narratives as specified by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). By looking at a 12-month period, preceding the plan date, the employer can assess the current state of employment opportunity with the organization to determine if additional actions need to be taken. Update plans for interim periods are developed to monitor Affirmative Action and measure progress.

The Agency performs periodic audits of contractors to review their Affirmative Action programs.

Adverse Impact

Adverse impact occurs in a personnel action when the selection rate of one class of applicants or employees falls below 80% of the selection rate of a complement class, taking into consideration whether the action is positive (e.g., promotion) or negative (i.e., termination). Traditional adverse impact considers the selection rate of a protected class (i.e., race or gender) against the complement non-protected class.

Applicant

A person considered for a job within an organization. An applicant for the purpose of Affirmative Action reporting should be defined to ensure conformance to the regulations and support consistent practices within your organization. This term is typically limited to those who express interest in a particular job opening and who meet minimum qualifications for employment in that position.

For more information on the regulatory definition, see: Definition of an Internet Applicant.

Availability

The percentage of a protected class, calculated to be available for employment openings within a job group at a work location. In determining External Availability, data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau are used to compile demographics by occupation and geographic area. Internal Availability is determined by analyzing avenues of promotion within your organization.

Census Occupation Codes

Contained in the U.S. census data set, Census Occupation Codes are standardized conventions for classifying job titles. To support External Availability calculations, each job title within your organization is matched to a census occupation code.

Company Name

The Company Name will appear at the top of all reports printed in balanceAAP. If multiple plans are being created as part of a Master/Sub-plan set, location identifiers will be included, separately.

Comparator

A comparator is a member of the non-protected class who has been successful in being hired, promoted, transferred, or not terminated, or who receives a salary above the median. Protected class members who were not successful are then compared to the comparators in a Cohort Analysis.

Department Hierarchy

Necessary for those developing an Organizational Display, the Department Hierarchy is built in balanceAAP to reflect your organization's management structure.

Drilldown Reports

Developed in the Reporting Levels module, Drilldown Reports represent results by smaller units within a plan, with results displaying, based on standard or custom fields. Sectors may be used to create another level of Reporting Structure for a Drilldown.

EEO Category

As defined by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), EEO Categories are broad job classifications, based on employer type (e.g., private organization, educational institution). The EEOC compiles job classification schedules, accordingly. EEO Categories are then applied to job groups within your organization, during AAP preparation.

Employment

The number or percentage of minorities or females among those employed at a work location. Protected class employment percentages are compared to availability percentages in the Utilization Analysis.

Errors

In BALANCEaap, Errors are records containing blank, invalid, or duplicate data. Because Errors prevent the records from being included in AAP calculations, they must be corrected before one can proceed.

Executive Order 11246

Signed originally by President Lyndon Johnson and since amended, Executive Order 11246 forms the basis for the Affirmative Action obligations of Federal contractors and other covered entities.

Establishment (or Facility)

A work location that falls under an organization's umbrella. The location must be accounted for in AAP and EEO-1/VETS reporting, according to specific regulations.

Factor Weights

In a weighted analysis, a weight is a statement of how important a factor is to the whole calculation. Factor weighting is used to establish the relative importance of internal and external availability in your organization's hiring practices.

Feeder Jobs

Staffed positions within your organization that provide a normal promotion path into a particular job group. A "source' feeder job for the "target" job group comes from a job group that is lower in the hierarchy. Therefore in most cases, a job group should be prevented from being both the source and target for feeders.

File Consistency Issues

In balanceAAP, File Consistency Issues are flagged by the system, indicating potential data discrepancies across an employee's set of records. In this case, you may continue with running AAP analyses. However, for most accurate plan results, the issues should be reviewed to ascertain whether they are correct within your data scheme or require editing before proceeding.

History Data

To assess Goal Attainment, History dataData includesare employment and availability numbersneeded from the previousprior year’s affirmativeyear's actionplan plan.for Previousgoals, year’sAvailability, employmentincumbency numbersnumbers, areand neededVeterans. tobalanceAAP determineoffers three methods for linking or obtaining the numbernecessary ofdata incumbentsfrom fora promotion,History transfer,Source:

  • Manual andInput
  • Start terminationPoint impactAnalysis
  • Import ratiofrom analyses.Existing Previous year’s availability numbers are needed for the Goal Attainment and Share of Opportunities reports.Plan

Job Group

As the fundamental unit of analysis in an Affirmative Action plan (and often as a subset of and EEO Category), a Job Group is a collection of job titles with similar duties, content, compensation, or opportunity level.

Master Plan

For organizations with multiple plans, a Master Plan can be created to:

  • Control global settings and content across plans
  • House the organization's data set to ensure accuracy across plans
  • Produce AAP reporting for plans as a whole or in part

Narrative

The following Narratives are required elements of an Affirmative Action plan:

  • Women and Minorities
  • Individuals with Disabilities
  • Protected Veterans

In addition to outlining your organization’s commitments, policies, and actions regarding Affirmative Action, each Narrative "ties" the relevant statistical reporting together with verbiage to create a cohesive document.

OFCCP

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs is a part of the U.S. Department of Labor and has overall responsibility for ensuring that government contractors, subcontractors and certain financial institutions comply with federal regulations including those concerning affirmative action.

Organizational Display

The Organizational Display is one of two options that meet OFCCP requirements for creating an Organizational Profile (the other option is Workforce Analysis). Displayed in order of your organization's Department Hierarchy, this profile reflects your organization's race and gender demographics for both supervisors and staff personnel.

Personnel Action

A Personnel Action is an activity involving the employer that impacts or alters the employment status of an associated individual. Personnel actions in balanceAAP are represented by the following Data tables:

  • Applicants
  • New Hires
  • Promotions
  • Transfers
  • Terminations
  • User-defined Personnel Action

Placement Goals

If utilization in a job group for a protected class falls below availability to the level defined by the Utilization Rule selected, a placement goal will be set for that group equal to its availability percentage.

Plan Name

The Plan Name simply differentiates AAPs by year and analysis period. For organizations having set of plans (i.e., a Master plan, supported by sub-plans), the Plan Name applies to the Master plan as a whole; and the sub-plans are identified by Company (name) and Establishment (name).

Promotion Calculations

An alternative to using identified feeder jobs; promotion calculations reflect the employment statistics of those jobs from which promotions actually occurred.

Promotion

Data for the calculations can be drawn from the current year promotion file or the promotion history file.

Protected Class

A Protected Class is a category of persons, covered by provisions of regulations or statutes. In preparing affirmative action plan statistics, the protected classes include:

  • Females
  • Minorities
    • Blacks, Asians/Pacific Islanders, Hispanics, American Indians/Alaskan Natives

  • Protected Veterans
  • Individuals with Disabilities (IWDs)

Recruitment Area

When using Census data, recruitment areas can be places of 50,000+ people (1990 only), counties/townships, MSA’s, PMSA’s (1990 only), CMSA’s (1990 only), states, the entire U.S. summary, or weighted or unweighted combinations. Each job group can use one census area as its Reasonable Recruitment Area in determining availability.

Rollup Reports

For organizations with multiple plans that are organized into a Master/Sub Plan set, Rollups Reports, which are developed under Reporting Levels, can be created to display high-level views of plan results, above the sub-plan level.

Salary Analysis

The Salary Analysis is actually a series of analyses that can identify salary inequities within jobs, job groups, or salary grades. BALANCEaap’s salary analysis reports represent the latest in OFCCP audit techniques – the reports generated by BALANCEaap are the same as those prepared by the OFCCP when auditing your plan. The Salary Analysis is a useful audit support tool, and can be especially effective when used in conjunction with BALANCEaap’s Research List tool.

Salary Grade

Salary grades are groups of jobs with similar compensation structures. Salary grades are used to sort jobs in the Work Force Analysis and Job Group Analysis.

Sector Reports

Sector Reports are management-level displays that organize AAP results in ways that reflect an organization's structure. This function can be used to create another level of Reporting Structure for a Drilldown (e.g., departments can be grouped; grades can be divided into pay ranges).

When running reports for a Sector, only employees within that Sector will be included in the calculations.

Start Point Analysis

TheBALANCEaap's Start Point Analysis is an estimation of"recreates" the prior year’s affirmativeHistory action plan based on the current roster and the personnel actions that occurred during the plan date range. The Start Point Analysis is generatedData, by taking the rostercurrent plan's data and “rollingrolling back”back the personnelinformation actions.to Hires are removed fromcreate the roster,necessary terminations are added to the roster, and promotions and transfers are undone. The end result, if the personnel action files are complete and accurate, should be equal to last year’s roster."snapshot."

Sub Plan

For organizations with multiple locations, a Sub Plan represents a location plan. While a group of sub plans is controlled by a Master Plan, customization is available at the sub-plan level.

Utilization Rule

OFCCP has approved a series of Utilization Rules for use in comparing employment and availability to determine if a placement goal will be set. The rules include:

  • Any Difference
  • Whole Person
  • Eighty Percent
  • Significant Difference

Update Plan

An update is usually done for quarterly or semi-annual monitoring of personnel actions and utilization. It is frequently required for compliance reviews that occur more than several months after the annual plan. In an “update” or interim plan, availability is not recalculated as in an annual plan. Instead, availability figures are imported from the annual plan.

Whole Person Rule

A placement goal is set when availability exceeds employment by at least one whole person.

Workforce Analysis

The Workforce Analysis is one of two options that meet OFCCP requirements for creating an Organizational Profile (the other option is Organizational Display). This analysis presents race and gender demographics in a table format, by department. The results are displayed by job title, sorted by grade or average salary.