White Paper Explores Impact of Workforce Regulations on Federal Contractors

Words: Doug AblesAnnouncing in 2010 that it would increase enforcement efforts, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) appears to be in hot pursuit of workforce diversity compliance among federal contractors and their subs. So writes construction-industry recruiting expert and BirdDog VP of Marketing Doug Mitchell in a newly released white paper.

“Frankly, many contractors need a wake-up call,” said Mitchell of his motivation to write the paper. “I’d much rather they get it from a white paper than a compliance officer.”

According to Mitchell, industry recruiting firm BirdDog receives weekly contact from construction firms caught off guard by the workforce diversity requirements of their state and federal contracts. It was the commonality of confusion among contractors that inspired Mitchell to gather up insight from every corner of the industry and put it together in one place, easily accessible to contractors across the nation.

In addition to the team at BirdDog, Mitchell taps a federal road & bridge contractor with OFCCP audit experience, a state Department of Transportation compliance officer and the OFCCP audit experts at consulting firm HudsonMann to round out the paper. Together, they read between the lines of agency documents to help federal contractors understand where the agency is focused, as well as the risks of failing to provide a fully documented good-faith recruitment effort.

“A company’s compliance effort only counts if it is defensible,” writes Mitchell. “In other words, a contractor can be following the rules to a tee, but if he can’t prove it, the company is at risk.”

The paper explores methods for maintaining quality documentation of all hiring, recruiting and promoting behavior inside a federal contracting firm. Among the tools described is BirdDog’s Candidate Acquisition Management System (CAMS), which assists contractors not only in their efforts to achieve compliance with affirmative action and equal opportunity employment mandates, but helps them archive that effort, as well.

“Good record-keeping is the closest thing to bulletproofing yourself,” says Neil Dickinson, managing partner of HudsonMann. “It’s no longer those who discriminate that get into trouble. It’s those who look like they are discriminating simply because they don’t have proof to the contrary.”

The white paper, “Ten Thousand Shades of Gray — The Impact of Workforce Regulations on Federal Contractors” is available for free download at bit.ly/diversity-white-paper.
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