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On August 22, 2023, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
(“EEOC”) unveiled its four-year Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years
2022-2026 that it will use as a framework to advance its goals of
preventing and remedying employment discrimination. Under the
Government Performance and Results Act Modernization Act, agencies
like the EEOC must develop and post a strategic plan every four
fiscal years. The EEOC’s new Strategic Plan will be implemented
immediately.
The Strategic Plan establishes three main goals for the EEOC to
achieve in the coming years, and creates 15 performance measures to
track the agency’s progress in achieving these goals. The three
main goals are to:
- Combat and prevent employment discrimination through the
strategic application of the EEOC’s law enforcement
authorities. - Prevent employment discrimination and advance equal employment
opportunities through education and outreach. - Strive for organizational excellence through its people,
practices, and technology.
The EEOC’s first goal relates to the EEOC’s litigation
efforts to combat employment discrimination. As part of the first
goal, the EEOC will seek to ensure that more conciliations and
litigation resolutions contain targeted, equitable relief, as
opposed to simply providing monetary damages. In addition, as part
of this first goal, the EEOC is seeking to increase its capacity to
target systemic discrimination. It plans to do this by providing
more training to its staff attorneys on how to identify systemic
discrimination, as well as ensuring that each district office of
the EEOC has at least two staff members dedicated to identifying
systemic discrimination.
Another way the EEOC will seek to prevent employment
discrimination in the upcoming years is by increasing the
monitoring of conciliation agreements, to ensure that workplaces
are free from discrimination after the EEOC makes a finding of
discrimination. Finally, as part of this first goal the EEOC plans
to enhance its intake services to potential charging parties,
respondents, and their representatives. The EEOC stated that it
recently modernized and made its intake system more efficient, and
it plans to continue to make its intake system more accessible and
functional so it can better process requests for assistance.
The EEOC has developed ten strategies to execute its second
goal, which is focused on education and outreach, rather than
litigating already existing disputes. These strategies include
targeted outreach to vulnerable communities and underserved
employees, up-to-date guidance on employment discrimination laws,
and improved online infrastructure. The EEOC plans to monitor the
progress it makes of reaching out to vulnerable communities by
utilizing analytics and metrics to directly measure the impact of
each effort to reach communities.
The EEOC’s third goal is an internal initiative, and
includes programs like supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion
within its own workplace.
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