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Plan Settings

KEY TOPICS:

  • Plan Settings (Adverse Impact, Monitoring for Goal Attainment, Desk Audit Analysis)
  • Availability Calculation Settings (Census data source, Statistics Settings, quick factor weighting)

Important Note: The default Plan settings are sufficient for most contractors developing AAPs. Because balanceAAP uses the most currently accepted OFCCP statistical thresholds available at the time of development, changes should only be made after careful consideration or discussion with a consultant or attorney.

For more information on Adverse Impact, Goal Attainment, and other reporting, see: BALANCEaap Report Reference Guide.

Review Plan Settings for Statistical Calculations

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. 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. Click [Save] at the bottom of the page if changes are made.

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.

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.

Monitoring

In a prior year’s plan, goals may have been set to address areas of Adverse Impact. This will require personnel action data in the current plan to be analyzed for progress towards goal attainment.

Use the Monitoring menu to select what data will be used in the analysis. By default, the New Hire and Promotion Data tables are preselected. (Optional) Check the box to include Transfer data (or exclude other data by deselecting the appropriate box). These settings will determine how calculations will be presented on the Goal Attainment report.

Click [Save] if changes are made.

Desk Audit (Legacy Function)Function only)

The Desk Audit report replicates the analysis used by OFCCP to determine if a salary audit is warranted.

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. TheySelect canYes be included by checking the Yes,to include groups marked ashaving no comparator option.comparator.

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, theThe 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 usedfor when deciding whether further investigation will be conducted by the OFCCP. The OFCCP will typically conductconducting further investigation of a job group when the following is true:

  • When theThe number of protected employees in a group is 30 or more
  • When theThe 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[equals inor groupsexceeds] 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 3.0.3.00.

    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] if changes are made.