Ready, Set, Go! Time to Report Your Employee’s Data!
The CA Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) has released the Pay Reporting Portal and Templates employers should use to report their employee demographics and pay data to the State. Employers must report this information by March 31, 2021, and annually each year thereafter.
Private employers with 100 or more employees in the United States and at least one employee in California and who are required to file a federal EEO-1, must report pay and demographic information. Employers must also include temporary workers provided by a staffing agency or independent contractors if the individuals were included in the employer’s payroll and they were required to withhold federal social security taxes from their wages.
If an employer has been affected by the COVID pandemic, they may request an extension to file their report until April 30, 2021. Use the Enforcement Deferral Request link prior to March 31, 2021, to request the extension. The employer must state their reason for the request and requests can only be submitted through this link.
Many of the requirements are modeled after the information required by the EEO-1, however, please be aware there are some differences which have been indicated below.
Now is a good time to double-check your employee data to ensure you have the required information so you will be able to submit your report. This includes:
- The number of employees by race, ethnicity and sex in 10 different job categories. These job category definitions are the same for the EEO-1:
- Executive or senior-level officials and managers
- First or mid-level officials and managers
- Professionals
- Technicians
- Sales workers
- Administrative support workers
- Craftworkers
- Operatives
- Laborers and helpers
- Service workers
- The number of employees by race, ethnicity and sex whose annual earnings within the pay bands used by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The current pay bands can be found on page 4 of the Occupational Employment Statistics survey.
- The total number of hours worked by each employee plus the hours they were on any form of paid time off for which they were paid by the employer, such as vacation, sick or holiday time. The federal EEO-1 does not include paid time off as one of its requirements.
The Department of Fair Employment and Housing released guidance with some additional information:
- Employers must choose a single pay period between October 1 and December 31st of the prior calendar year. This will serve as their ‘Snapshot Period.’
- Employers should report sex using three categories: female, male and non-binary.
- Employers may submit a federal EEO-1 Report if it contains the same or substantially similar pay data information. However, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is not currently requiring pay data to be reported. Unless this changes the standard federal EEO-1 will not be sufficient to meet the California requirements.
- Use Form W-2 Box 5 (Medicare wages and tips) to assign employees to the particular pay band. The EEO-1 uses the information from W-2 Box 1 for this purpose.
- For single establishment employers based in California, they should also include employees who are teleworking outside of California.
In addition, the DFEH issued guidance for multiple-establishment employers to include:
- Employers should use the same establishments they use for their EEO-1 and assign employees to those same establishments for their California report.
- If an employer is a multiple-establishment employer with locations only in California they should include all employees (including any employees teleworking outside of California)
- For multiple-establishment employers with locations inside and outside of California, the employer:
- Must report on its California establishments, all of its employees assigned to those locations (including any employees outside of California) and any California employees such as those working from home in California but assigned to an establishment outside of California.
- May report on all of its establishments and employees both inside and outside of California.
DFEH is providing employers with these options because one option may be less burdensome for employers than the other depending on how they do their federal EEO-1 reporting.
How SDHRC Can Help
Don’t have the employee data you need and not sure how to go about collecting it? We can help! Contact us for practical ideas on gathering your employee’s data so you are not scrambling to put together your report on the deadline of March 31st. We can also help with putting the report together to give you time to focus on more important things such as running your business!
