The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission plans to increase its focus on protecting people with disabilities, older workers, LGBTQ+ individuals and temporary workers over the next five years. That’s according to a strategic plan the agency unveiled Tuesday for fiscal years 2022-2026.
Implementation began immediately.
The plan “emphasizes expanding the EEOC’s capacity to eliminate systemic barriers to equal opportunity in the workplace, using technology and other tools to improve our services to the public, and achieving organizational excellence with a culture of accountability, inclusivity and accessibility,” EEOC Chair Charlotte A. Burrows said in a statement.
Highlights:
- Staff members will be trained to identify and investigate cases of systemic discrimination, and the agency will devote additional resources to enforcement.
- Monitoring of conciliation agreements will be improved to ensure that workplaces where discrimination is found ultimately are free of discrimination.
- Access to intake services will be enhanced for potential charging parties, respondents and representatives via more intake interview appointments and improved overall service to the public.
- Technology and outreach strategies will be leveraged to expand the agency’s connection to diverse populations, vulnerable communities and small, new and disadvantaged or underserved employers.
- Promising practices to prevent workplace discrimination will be promoted to employers.
The EEOC also publishes a strategic enforcement plan, which is a separate document that establishes the commission’s substantive area priorities for its work to advance equal employment opportunity and prevent and remedy discrimination in the workplace. A draft of a new strategic enforcement plan was published earlier this year but has not yet been finalized.
“The two previous strategic enforcement plans highlighted the enforcement priority. This one does the same thing to some extent,” Fisher Phillips attorney J. Randall Coffey told the McKnight’s Business Daily in January. “At the same time, it seems more generalized than the two earlier plans.”
The provisions that relate to vulnerable workers are particularly relevant to senior living and care providers, he said, as the employees often are lower paid minority and immigrant workers.
