It is a sometimes little-known fact in HR circles that any employer (aside from state and local governments, schools, Indian tribes and tax-exempt private membership clubs) which has at least 100 employees or which has at least 50 employees and a purchase order, contract or subcontract involving at least $50,000 from the federal government is required to file an EEO-1 Report with the EEOC by September 30 of each year. All banks and other financial institutions which issue U.S. Savings Bonds or which serve as a depository for any amount of government funds which have at least 50 employees also must file these reports.

The EEOC prefers that these reports be filed online through the EEO-1 Online Filing System on its website – http://www.eeoc.gov/. There is a sample EEO-1 Report available on the EEOC's website as well. However, this cannot be printed off to use to file a hard-copy report. Blank EEO-1 Report forms must be requested by phone or in writing from the EEOC.

Those employers with only one location obviously only need to file one EEO-1 Report. However, those with multiple locations must file (1) a report covering their headquarters or principle office, (2) a separate report for each location with more than 50 employees, and (3) either a separate report for each location with less than 50 employees or an Establishment List which reflects the company name, address and total employment for each location with less than 50 employees. For those multi-location employers who file their EEO-1 Reports online, all of these separate reports will automatically transfer over to a consolidated report. (Those filing hard-copy reports will need to create a separate consolidated EEO-1 Report which combines the totals reflected on reports (1)-(3) above.)

For those who are not familiar with/have never filed an EEO-1 Report, these reports reflect the breakdown of your workforce by position groupings (executives, professionals, technicians, sales, laborers, etc.) by race/ethnicity and gender.

The reason for our sending out this alert two months before these reports are due is that the EEOC prefers that regarding race/ethnicity employees be permitted to "self-identify" rather than the employer simply "guessing" as to which racial/ethnic group to count each employee in in their EEO-1 Reports. This means for employees hired since last September and certainly for employers who have never before filed an EEO-1 Report, you will need to send out a voluntary survey to these new (or to "all" for those "virgin filers") employees asking them which racial/ethnic group they prefer to be identified with. Accordingly, collecting and then processing the data for your EEO-1 Report(s) may take some time.