Equal Employment Opportunity Complaint Procedure (United States)

This Wisdom of the Crowd (ACC member discussion) addresses best practices and procedures for processing and addressing Equal Employment Opportunity ("EEO") complaints under US law. This resource was compiled from questions and responses posted on the forum of the Small Law Departments and Employment & Labor Law ACC Networks.*

*(Permission was received from the ACC members quoted below prior to publishing their forum comments in this Wisdom of the Crowd resource.)

Question:

I would be interested in hearing about the EEO complaint procedures for other organizations. Can employees file a complaint and/or talk to any manager regarding EEO issues or is it limited to his/her manager or their manager's manager? If they can talk to any manager, and they make EEO allegations and the manager does not take any action (e.g., notify appropriate parties), will their knowledge and inaction be imputed to the organizations? What are the best practices with respect to this area?

Wisdom of the Crowd:

Response #1:

• Failure to take appropriate investigative and remedial steps will definitely be imputed to the organization if the report was made to any manager. Training managers on EEO basics is one option, but IMHO not the best. Rather than leave the analysis of the nuances of discrimination law to managers, I would have a policy requiring all reports go to you or HR. Managers still receiving reports must relay them immediately to you or HR even if they don't think there is a problem.¹
  

  Response #2:

  Best practice in this area is to have multiple complaint avenues (e.g., manager, HR, Compliance) so that an employee who is being harassed by her manager isn't required to complain to the harasser. Other best practices include using trained, objective investigators, investigating promptly, and taking effective remedial action to prevent further discrimination or harassment.²

  Response #3:

  Agreed regarding multiple avenues. To the original post's second point, you need to train all the managers so they know how to recognize a "complaint" and what to do when they receive one. In most cases, knoweldge of a supervisor is imputed to the employer, so if the employee makes a report to another supervisor in the organization and that person does not contact HR, then you have a problem. Also, managers should be trained that there are no "informal" or "off the record" complaints. If they hear of something that sounds like an EEO issue, they must raise it immediately to HR. You will be deemed to be "on notice" even if the employee says it is "off the record" or "not a formal complaint" or "just wants to vent" etc.³

¹ Najia Haddock, General Counsel and Chief Legal Officer, Children's Learning Adventure USA, LLC, Phoenix, Arizona (Small Law Departments, February 20, 2014).

² Anonymous (Employment & Labor Law, February 19, 2014).

³ Emerson Moser, Vice President & Assistant General Counsel, General Cable Corporation, Highland Heights, Kentucky (Employment & Labor Law, February 20, 2014).