Compensation Data, Analysis and AAPs: What You Need To Know

If you're a contractor with the U.S. Government, you're generally required to prepare an annual Affirmative Action Plan. Preparing your data for an Affirmative Action Plan is an essential component of your overall compliance strategy. Compensation analysis is a core component of an Affirmative Action Plan, and it's important to understand what data you'll need, how to prepare and validate that data, and what kinds of analyses are appropriate. In this presentation, we discuss these data requirements, the importance of data scrubbing / data cleaning, and offer suggestions on some common data validation tools. We talk about how incomplete and/or incorrect data affects compensation analyses, Affirmative Action Plans in general, the overall compliance of the business, and the strategic decisions of the organization.

While general payroll information such as time sheets and pay stubs is required, compensation decision documentation also plays a role. Compensation decision documentation, such as external and internal benchmarking, salary surveys, performance evaluations, compensation policies and practices, etc., generally is not kept as rigorously as payroll information. In this presentation, we discuss why compensation decision documentation is important, why it should be rigorously maintained, and how it factors in to compensation analyses and the Affirmative Action Plan.

One of the most important elements of a compensation analysis is the way in which employees are grouped for comparison purposes. Improperly grouped employees can render the results of an analysis meaningless, can lead to businesses drawing the wrong conclusions about their compensation practices, and can cause organizations to make inappropriate and/or unnecessary adjustments to compensation. The presentation concludes with a discussion of guidelines on proper employee groupings and how the groupings chosen impacts analysis results and inferences.

While the presentation focuses on compensation data and analysis within the context of Affirmative Action Plans, the data requirements for compensation analyses, documentation requirements, data cleaning techniques and suggestions on employee groupings equally apply to any analysis of compensation, whether for Affirmative Action Planning purposes or other purposes.

human resources professionals, compensation professionals, compliance officers, affirmative action specialists, corporate counsel, federal contractors and individuals interested in contracting with the federal government

1. Understand current compensation data requirements for Affirmative Action Plans, and how those requirements are likely to change in the near future 2. Learn how to scrub and clean compensation data using common data validation tools 3. Understand how data gaps and incorrect information affect Affirmative Action Plans, compensation analyses, and the strategic decisions of the organization

OFCCP Guidance on Affirmative Action Plans, U.S. Department of Labor's Compensation Standards and Guidelines

		Carla Irwin Carla Irwin & Associates, Inc. View Profile

		Stephanie Thomas Thomas Econometrics View Profile