Affirmative Employment

DM&EEO has published A Guide to Conducting Workforce Analysis, which provides step-by-step instructions for conducting workforce planning and succession planning, using on-line data available from VSSC.

Affirmative Employment refers to workforce analysis and recruitment efforts to ensure that qualified applicants from diverse groups are included in the recruitment pool for VA vacancies, and progress at comparable rates once employed. The selections from these applicants and their subsequent promotions are made on the sole basis of merit, but if specific groups are not well represented in the pool, the chances of the best qualified applicant being from that group decrease significantly.

Affirmative employment, steps taken to be sure that all groups are included in the pool to prevent future problems, has quite a different emphasis than affirmative action, which is generally court-mandated hiring to correct an existing problem.

There are several strong affirmative employment programs:
1. The Affirmative Employment Program for Women and Minorities, required by EEOC in Management Directive MD-715.

3. The Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Recruitment Program (FEORP), required by OPM 5 U.S.C. 7201, Part 720 of Title 5 CFR .

4. The Disabled Veterans Affirmative Employment Program (DVAAP), required by OPM 38 U.S.C. 4214 Part 720 of Title 5 CFR .

These programs generally require that agencies conduct a detailed analysis of relevant recruitment, employment, grade, and related personnel topics, establish goals for improving representation, and make yearly reports of progress to the requesting agency.