myAAP Glossary

Additional Availability: Availability data other than labor areas and feeders, which can be used as a source of potential job applicants.  Additional availability sources can be internal (internal training, tests, etc.) or external (trade schools, local job services, etc.).

Availability: An estimate, including internal and external components, of the qualified number of minorities and women available for employment for the jobs in a given job group.  In other words, the pool of people in a specified geographic area who are qualified for a particular job.  Availability is calculated by job group.

Census Occupation Code: Occupation code(s) from the 2010 Census, which are assigned to each job title, and used to calculate availability.

Current Site: Site where the employee works, not necessarily where their hiring decisions are made.  This site may or may not be included in this plan.

Data Container: The ”container” into which all data (employees, promotions, terminations, hires, and applicants) will be imported for a specific plan year.

EEO Category: Job classifications primarily based on the average skill level, knowledge, and responsibility involved in each occupation.  EEO categories are created by the Department of Labor based on employer type, such as private employer, higher education, or state/local government.  See below for a list of EEO categories for each employer type.

IMPORTANT: EEO categories for higher education are now known as IPEDS.  myAAP will treat IPEDS as EEO categories.

Establishment Plan Container: This container type is used to create plans based on the selection site field in the imported data (site where hiring/firing decisions are made).  This container type is normally used by federal contractors for submission to the OFCCP.

Feeder: A job group or job title that could potentially ”feed” into a given job group.  These are jobs that can be promotable, transferrable, and/or trainable for a given job group.

Final Availability: Recruitment percentages that represent how often the organization recruits locally, nationally, or internally for a given job or job group.  This is accomplished by asking, ”If there were a vacancy for a position within this job group, based on historical knowledge, what is the likelihood you would recruit locally, nationally, and internally?”  These recruitment percentages become the factor weights for final availability.

Functional Plan Container: This container type splits imported data into plans based on the selected organizational unit (which represents business unit, division, or department).  This "plan splitter" is selected from the organizational unit fields in the imported employee file.

Incumbency: This refers to the current workforce, or employees.

Job Code: A unique code assigned to each job in the organization.  Each job title must have a unique job code (there cannot be two job titles with the same job code).

Job Group: The AAP Regulations define a job group as ”jobs at the establishment with similar content, wage rates, and opportunities...  Similarity of content refers to the duties and responsibilities of the job titles which make up the job group.  Similarity of opportunities refers to training, transfers, promotions, pay, mobility, and other career enhancement opportunities offered by the jobs within the job group.”  Organizations with fewer than 150 employees can use EEO categories to double as job groups, but larger organizations often use more discrete job groups.

Job Title: Each job code must have a unique job title (i.e., Administrative Assistant I, Administrative Assistant II, Senior Administrative Assistant).  You may have one person in a particular job, or hundreds, but each unique job needs a unique job title.

Labor Area: A labor area is the geographic area from which an employer usually seeks, or reasonably could seek, workers for jobs in a given job group.  Labor areas are used for compiling occupational data from the U.S. Census.  Defining labor areas accurately can significantly enhance the accuracy of all utilization analyses.

Narrative: The written portion of your affirmative action plan(s).  There should be a narrative for minorities and women, and one for protected veterans and individuals with disabilities.

Organization: In myAAP, data and plans for all years is stored within a container referred to as the organization.  This can also refer to the entire company.

Organizational Unit: Department, division, section branch, group, or similar component within an organization.  Department is most commonly used as the organizational unit.

Pay Grade: A pay scale based on the level of responsibilities, job description, authority level of the position, and length of time the employee has held the position.  Pay grades provide a framework for compensation by defining the amount of pay available at each step in the employment process.

Plan Container: A plan container resides within a data container, and holds all plans of the specified type: Establishment, Functional, or Rollup.  Once data is imported to the data container, plan containers of different types may be created, and will use the same imported data.

Transaction Period: The 12-month period following the snapshot date.  This is the period during which the Affirmative Action Plan is effective.

Rollup Plan Container: This container type is used to create a single plan that includes all imported employees, regardless of any other criteria (such as selection site or organizational unit).  This option may be used by organizations that only need to create one plan, or by larger organizations to create a plan that will not necessarily be submitted to controlling authorities, but may be useful for in-house analysis and planning.  

Selection Site: Where employment decisions (hire, promotion, and termination decisions) are made for the target employee, not necessarily where the employee works.

Snapshot Date: The date on which the employee data was pulled.  This will provide a ”snapshot” of current employees on that specific date.

Transaction Files: The files containing applicants, hires, promotions, and terminations.  Each transaction type should be in a separate file.

Transaction Period: The 12-month period prior to the snapshot date.  Applicants, hires, promotions, and terminations that occurred during this period are analyzed in the Personnel Transaction Report, and can also be included in several optional reports.

Utilization Test: A formula that helps determine whether an organization’s actual representation rates are lower than would reasonably be expected (underutilization).  Companies use a number of methods to determine if underutilization exists, and any reasonable method, universally applied, is acceptable to the OFCCP.  For details on how each test is calculated, see Utilization Tests.

• Any Difference: underutilization is declared if there is any difference between the utilization percentage (actual representation) and the availability percentage (expected representation).
• Whole Person: underutilization is declared if the actual representation is at least one whole person lower than the number predicted by the expected representation.
• 80%: underutilization is declared only when the actual representation is less than 80% of the expected representation.
• Standard Deviation: underutilization is declared when the difference between actual and expected representation yields a standard deviation result of 1.96 or higher.
• Exact Binomial: underutilization is declared when the difference between actual and expected representation yields a standard deviation result of 1.96 or higher.
• 80% and Whole Person: underutilization is declared when the expected representation exceeds actual representation by at least one whole person *and* the actual representation is less than 80% of the expected representation.

Worksite: The physical work location of the employee.  This can be the same as or different from the selection site and/or current site.