California’s Civil Rights Division (CRD) has released updated frequently asked questions, templates, and a user guide for the 2023 pay data reporting period for employers with 100 or more employees. Employers must use the CRD’s online pay data reporting portal to submit their annual reports. The portal is open. The reporting deadline for 2023 is May 8, 2024.
The details
Background
A private employer that has 100 or more employees, with at least one California employee, must submit a pay data report covering the prior calendar year to the state on or before the second Wednesday of May each year, regardless of whether they are required to submit an EEO-1 report.
A private employer that has 100 or more employees, with at least one California employee, hired through labor contractors within the prior calendar year must also submit a separate pay data report to the state covering those employees. The private employer must also disclose on the pay data report the ownership names of all labor contractors used to supply employees. A labor contractor must supply all necessary pay data to the private employer.
Updated Guidance and Tools
The CRD has updated its answers to frequently asked questions for the 2023 reporting period.
Here are a few key updates:
Updated Data Fields for Reporting Remote Workers
Employers must now report the number of employers in an employee group who work remotely during the Snapshot Period. The CRD defines a remote worker as a payroll or labor contractor employee who is entirely remote, teleworking, or home-based, and has no expectation to regularly report in person to a physical establishment to perform work duties.
The templates now have fields for: (1) the number of employees that don’t work remotely, (2) the number of remote employees located within California, and (3) the number of remote employees located outside of California.
Note: Employees in hybrid roles or (partial) teleworking arrangements expected to appear in person to perform work at a particular establishment for any portion of time during the Snapshot Period would not be considered remote workers for pay data reporting purposes.
Labor Contractor Demographic Data
The updated guidance also makes clear that for Labor Contractor Employee Reports, reporting “unknown” race/ethnicity or sex of a labor contractor employee is no longer permitted.
Employee self-identification is the preferred method of identifying race/ethnicity information, according to the CRD. If an employee declines to state their race/ethnicity, employers must still report the employee according to one of the seven race/ethnicity categories, using (in the following order): current employment records, other reliable records or information, or observer perception.
The CRD says it recognizes the risk of inaccurate race/ethnicity identification based on observer perception alone; this method should only be used after making a good faith effort to obtain race/ethnicity information from the employee or from other reliable records. When an employer uses observer perception, the CRD encourages employers to utilize the clarifying remarks field to state they have done so, stating for example: “The race/ethnicity of [number] employees in this employee grouping is being reported based on observer perception.”
Updated templates
The CRD has also updated templates for the 2023 reporting period. Employers shouldn’t use Excel templates or .CSV examples from prior years; the portal will reject submissions based on outdated versions of the templates.
Next steps
ADP is in the process of reviewing our reporting capabilities to help support clients who need to retrieve employee-level data necessary to file a pay data report. We will provide updates soon.
If you are a covered employer:
- Read the updated FAQs and user guide.
- Review the templates (Excel and CSV).
- Determine your “Snapshot Period” to identify the employees who will be included in your report. Employees assigned to California establishments and/or who work from California must be included.
Note: The “Snapshot Period” is a single pay period between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31 of the Reporting Year. You are free to choose the single pay period between those dates that will serve as your Snapshot Period.
- Determine which establishments you have and gather information about each establishment.
- For all employees in the Snapshot Period, identify each employee’s establishment, job category, race/ethnicity, sex, pay, pay band and hours worked in 2023. For 2023, the pay bands are the same as in 2022:
- Within each establishment, group employees who have the same job category, pay band and race/ethnicity/sex combination. Some groups may be a group of one, if no other employee in the establishment shares that employee’s job category, pay band, race/ethnicity, and sex.
- Within each employee group in each establishment, calculate the total hours worked by the group.
- Within each employee group in each establishment, calculate the group’s mean hourly rate and the group’s median hourly rate.
- Within each employee group in each establishment, identify the number of workers who were remote workers during the Snapshot Period.
- Gather additional information about the employer and its establishments, such as:
- Build the report in the portal.
- Provide any clarifying remarks in the relevant field(s) and correct any errors identified by the portal.
- As a reminder, ADP® is in the process of reviewing our reporting capabilities to help support clients who need to retrieve employee-level data necessary to file a pay data report. We will provide updates soon.
- Certify the final report and submit it through the online portal by May 8, 2024.
Note: If you are required to file a pay data report for labor contractors, you must follow a similar process for your labor contractor employee report and submit it through the portal separately from your payroll employee report.