Support for Employee Organization (EO) Conferences and Training Events

Employee Organizations are organizations, associations, fellowships, or any chapters thereof, whose membership is exclusively or predominately composed of current IRS employees and organizations that represent minority groups. Visit http://edi.web.irs.gov/. Approves Employee Organizations or Employee Resource Groups are autonomous and operate based on their individual bylaws; therefore, they are not operated or directed by the IRS.

The IRS is committed to creating an environment that provides employees the ability to reach their full potential. Employees may participate in Employee Organization professional development conferences by using up to 16 hours of administrative time per calendar year for job-related, developmental activities (see Article 30, Section 2D of the National Agreement) with managerial approval.

Employee organization professional conferences will be evaluated to determine the number of hours that constitute training. Conferences must adhere to Title 5 of the Code of Federal Regulations 410.404:

Purpose of the conference is educational or instructional;

More than half of the time is scheduled for a planned, organized exchange of information between presenters and audience; and

Content is germane to improving individual and/or organizational performance.

Results of the evaluation will be provided to EO Presidents and the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. A scheduled of national conferences will be made available, which displays the number of hours that constitute training activity that managers may grant for employee attendance. Click on the following URL for information: http://hco.web.irs.gov/devtrain/PROGADMIN/emporg.html.

The IRS no longer funds Employee Organization or Employee Resource Group conference activity.