Can the EEOC Eliminate the EEO-1 Report?

Why Employers Should Closely Watch the Growing Debate Over Workforce Data Collection For nearly six decades, the EEO-1 report has served as one of the federal government’s primary workforce data collection tools in the fight against workplace discrimination. Employers with 100 or more employees, including many federal contractors, have long been required to submit demographic…
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EEOC Performance Report (Part II): Why Employees File EEOC Complaints

While rising enforcement activity and monetary recoveries have drawn attention to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, they do not fully explain a more fundamental question facing employers today: Why do employees decide to file complaints in the first place? In practice, most EEOC charges are not triggered by a single event. They are the…
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Enforcement Begins: Inside the EEOC’s post-EO 14173 Settlements

When Executive Order 14173 was issued in January 2025, many employers assumed that the revocation of Executive Order 11246 marked the end of federal oversight of affirmative action and diversity initiatives. Eight months later, that assumption has been proven dangerously wrong. While the structure of oversight has changed, enforcement has not disappeared. It has shifted….
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Eight Months After EO 14173 — What Changed and What it Means for Federal Contractors

When Executive Order 14173 was issued in January 2025, revoking Executive Order 11246, many federal contractors took a sigh of relief. To some, it appeared that decades of affirmative action planning and federal oversight had come to an end. Yet eight months later, the reality has become unmistakable: EO 14173 did not eliminate compliance requirements….
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What Is Merit-Based Hiring and Does It Work?

Definition of Merit-Based Hiring Merit-based hiring is a recruitment strategy that focuses on selecting candidates based solely on their skills, experience, qualifications, and performance rather than personal characteristics or biases. In simple terms, when companies adopt hiring based on merit, they prioritize measurable factors like job competency, test scores, and work history over subjective elements…
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