Westat
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| Employee-owned | |
| Founded | Rockville, Maryland, USA (1963) |
| Headquarters | Rockville, Maryland, USA |
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Key people
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James E. Smith (President and CEO) Graham Kalton (Chairman of the Board) |
| Products | WesVar®, Blaise® |
| Revenue | 495.9 million USD (FY2013) |
| Website | www.westat.com |
James E. Smith (President and CEO)
Westat is an employee-owned statistical survey research corporation in Rockville, Maryland, USA, providing research services to agencies of the U.S. Government, as well as businesses, foundations, and state and local governments.
Westat Inc. began as a partnership in 1961 with cofounders Edward C. Bryant, Ph.D., a tenured full professor of statistics at the University of Wyoming, and two former students, James Daley and Donald King. In 1963, the company was incorporated. Dr. Bryant served as Westat’s first President until 1978, when Joseph Hunt took over as President and CEO for the next 32 years. In May 2011, James E. Smith, Ph.D., became President and CEO of the company.
In September 2014,Westat entered into a conciliation agreement with the OFCCP) to resolve issues, including record keeping and statistical shortfalls in hiring for certain jobs, identified during a routine audit of the company’s affirmative action programs for 2008-2009. There was no OFCCP finding of intentional discrimination on Westat’s part. The agreement requires payment of a monetary settlement which has been completed, hiring goals which have already been met, and a two-year reporting period, ending in September 2016, with which the company is in full compliance. Westat has also taken substantial steps to correct the reporting practices that led to the complaint and remains fully committed to equal opportunity employment and its affirmative action programs.
Westat conducts studies on health conditions and expenditures, academic achievement and literacy, medical treatments and outcomes, exposure assessments, program evaluation, information management and communications solutions, and respondent knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. It supports two software packages, WesVar and Blaise. The former is a variance estimation software while the latter is a survey processing system.
The firm is employee-owned. All employees can earn a share of ownership through the Westat Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). Since the introduction of the plan in 1977, the value of employee holdings has grown.
Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs discovered, during a scheduled audit of the company systems in 2014, that Westat systematically discriminated against 638 women applicants, 2,153 African American applicants, 825 Asian American applicants, and 35 Hispanic job applicants for research analyst, programmer analyst, telephone data collector, survey process, and field data collector positions, between Oct. 1, 2008, and Sept. 30, 2009.
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