The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recently granted a three-year extension of the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (UGESP, Uniform Guidelines, or simply Guidelines) for continued use by the federal agencies that incorporate them, including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP).
The 45-year-old “Uniform Guidelines,” as they are commonly referred to, are used by employers to analyze whether their employee selection decisions have “adverse impact” on the basis of race, ethnicity, or gender. Importantly, the Guidelines are incorporated into the regulatory requirements of both the EEOC and OFCCP, and continue to guide these agencies in determining how federal anti-discrimination laws and regulations apply to employers’ facially neutral selection criteria.
Despite their age, application of the Uniform Guidelines today is as relevant as ever, especially in the context of the increasing availability and use of artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms for employment purposes. Given the critical role that the Guidelines can play in the employment selection process, we thought this was a good time to provide a refresher since the last time we analyzed the Guidelines in 2015.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.