California Harassment Training Requirements: Everything You Need To Know

California sexual harassment training requirements are distinctive compared to other States in the United States of America. Also, as sexual harassment prevention training varies significantly from one state to another, it can be pretty challenging to get your brains around what training companies must present.

It is mandatory for businesses with five or more employees in California to implement training. Also, it is vitally crucial to comprehend all the specifications for your company to avoid heavy compliance penalties. 

Sexual harassment in employment has grown as a serious cause of concern. This is why the liability of an employer gets extended to acts perpetrated by administrators and rank-and-file employees. Hence, it is essential to know what constitutes sexual harassment under both California and national law and take measures to limit or hinder it. 

Understanding California Harassment Training Requirements

Starting in 2019, California enormously expanded its harassment prevention training requirements. Nowadays, companies with five or more workers must comply with training responsibilities, down from 50 or more.

In addition to superintendents accepting two hours of harassment prevention training, non-supervisory workers must receive one hour of sexual harassment prevention training. This training must happen after every six months of hire or promotion and every two years consequently.

Many businesses are still unaware that the California anti-harassment training requirements got significantly expanded by the state legislature. Furthermore, this new enactment demands numerous California corporations to execute anti-harassment training, for the primary time, in both Spanish and English language. 

Businesses must also offer training to their California-based workers, so long as they contract five or more staff anywhere, even if they do not serve at one business location. Moreover, in 2018, California enacted SB 1343, which altered the state’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) to supplement more specifications for the prevention of sexual harassment. 

Due to this, approximately 92 percent of the state’s employees, or roughly 15.5 million workers, will be affected. The ruling also influences staffing companies that furnish companies with temporary workers. These employees will likely have to receive sexual harassment prevention training at least every two years, even if they simply serve for a short time at the company.

Points to Keep in Mind while Drafting Anti-harassment Training Policies

Companies should remain informed that both SB 1343 and SB 778 acts in California's Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) include particular training obligations of which all businesses should be aware when drafting ting anti-harassment training policies:

• Harassment prevention training may be accomplished by workers independently or as members of a group presentation. It might also be performed in more concise sections if the relevant hourly total obligation gets met. Moreover, during the pandemic, virtual meetings conveyed by a work attorney are usually the favored training process.

• The training and learning needed must incorporate data and practical supervision concerning the national and state legal provisions regarding the repudiation against and the prevention and reconstruction of sexual harassment and the assistance obtainable to sufferers of sexual harassment in a workplace.

• The training and education must cover real precedents aimed at teaching administrators in restricting harassment, prejudice, and retaliation. Also, it must get impersonated by coaches or instructors with expertise and knowledge in preventing workplace harassment, bias, and vengeance.

• To comply with the subject material of the training must not merely be confined to sexual harassment prevention training. Training presented must be comprehensive of harassment based on gender expression, gender identity, and physical orientation.

• These legislations establish a minimum threshold for education. Companies can choose to render more extended, frequent, or extensive training and education.

Ways to Comply with SB1343 Under California's Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) 

Some recent campaigns for sexual harassment have revived attention and awareness on the practices for sexual harassment in the workplace. California, remaining at the vanguard of workplace protections in the United States, enacted various anti-harassment legislation over the past few years.

Most significantly, California’s SB 1343 act, under the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), obligates companies with five or more workers to present anti-harassment training to all workers (both non-supervisory and supervisory) by January 2020. 

This brand-new legislation is unquestionably a dramatic transformation from the prevailing provisions, which have remained in position for more than a decade long, but a crucial one. This new legislation needs businesses with at least 50 workers to provide supervisors with two hours of harassment prevention training within six months of employment and every two years after this period. 

Moreover, the threshold number of workers that trigger protection under the law was reduced to five, and non-supervisory workers got incorporated in the training order. Hence it might not be wrong to state that sexual harassment in the workplace is a venture that companies in California just cannot afford. 

Directed by high-profile sexual harassment and criminal cases in the workplace, California legislators have exercised it upon themselves to warrant most companies, even those with just a few workers, reduce their risk by ordering training for all employees. It also implies that your company may soon move out of compliance with California’s current obligatory sexual harassment training for all businesses with 5 or more workers. 

This is why, in the coming years, companies will necessitate taking measures to satisfy the many specifications of the SB 1343 act under California's Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA). To accomplish this, companies must begin by scheduling and presenting sexual harassment and prejudice training to their workers who meet the specifications described as soon as feasible. 

The new order needs that the following points must be in a harassment prevention training courses: 

• The illegality of physical harassment at the workplace.
• The description of sexual harassment under relevant state and national legislation.
• A definition of sexual harassment, employing practical precedents.
• The in-house grievance process of the company is open for the employee.
• The constitutional remedies and accusation means are available through the department.
• Regulations on how to communicate with the department.
• Description of how workers remain protected from vengeance after offering a claim.
• A section or the web address for the sexual harassment training courses online.

The company must additionally describe the specifications above in a printed notice delivered to every worker. Amidst the harassment prevention training courses and the handouts, workers should understand what sexual harassment and offensive behavior are, how to register a case if they are a sufferer of workplace harassment or offensive behavior, and where they should run for more erudition. 

Also, according to Senate Bill or SB 1343, the education and training needed is designed to set a minimum threshold and should not discourage any company from rendering long-drawn, more common, or elaborate training and education concerning employment harassment or other kinds of prohibited prejudice.

To Conclude

Hence, to sum up, we can say that California Harassment training requirements are the best way employers can make their employees aware of various kinds of workplace harassment and how to prevent them. These anti-harassment training can take place either personally or via online training courses. 

If your company prefers providing live anti-harassment training, the training provider must possess the required acquaintance and expertise in harassment prevention, prejudice, vengeance, and harassment based on gender.