As we reported a few months ago, in January of this year the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) launched a joint effort dubbed the Hiring Initiative to Reimagine Equity (“HIRE”) initiative. In introducing the initiative, the two agencies promised to engage a “broad array of stakeholders,” including employer, civil rights, and worker communities, to “identify strategies to remove unnecessary barriers to hiring and to promote effective, job-related hiring and recruitment practices to cultivate a diverse pool of qualified workers.”
On June 28, the EEOC and OFCCP hosted their third virtual roundtable since the inception of the HIRE initiative, this one entitled “Skills Based Hiring: Removing Barriers and Paving Pathways to an Inclusive Workforce.” Despite the initiative’s ambitious goals, however, the three virtual roundtables are the only concrete developments to emerge thus far.
More information about the HIRE Initiative is available on the EEOC’s and OFCCP’s landing pages. The archived series of roundtable discussions, including the June 28 session, are available on the EEOC’s YouTube channel.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.