Risk managers: California has new sexual harassment training requirements

Companies with more than five employees have less than a year to provide interactive sexual harassment training to all California-based workers, according to the state’s newly implemented requirements.

A series of new sexual harassment-related laws went into effect in California for 2019. The most time-intensive change will likely be the implementation of broader, more in-depth harassment training.

Company compliance concerns

“The law that is going to have the probably greatest immediate impact in terms of company compliance concerns is the added requirement of training for nonsupervisory employees by 2020,” said Adam Karr, a partner at O’Melveny & Myers.

By the end of 2019, SB 1343 requires employers in California provide two hours of sexual harassment training to supervisors and one hour of training to non-supervisor employees. The training must be provided within six months of hiring and repeated every two years.

Prior to 2019, California law only required training for supervisors.

Related: Sexual harassment and insurance: Are your clients’ businesses covered?

Dawn Knepper, an Irvine, California-based shareholder at Buchalter, said providing training to all employees may increase bystander intervention. Susan Groff, a principal in Jackson Lewis’ Los Angeles office, said such training also helps employees know their rights when it comes to harassment at work.

“It’s important for everyone to go through training so you learn, even as a bystander or an observer of inappropriate behavior that you, too, have an obligation to report it and what your alternative means are in going ahead and doing that,” Knepper said. “That’s part of the reason I always stress to my clients the importance of offering the training to everyone.”

Companies could have all employees, including supervisors, attend the first hour of training, and then conduct a second hour of training with only supervisors. Knepper said this could be an efficient way to run training. But Groff noted it’s important that non-supervisor employees are as comfortable opening up in a combined training as they would be without supervisors present.

New law expands requirements to small companies

The new law doesn’t just increase the employee groups trained. It also expands the number of companies required to train. Previously, only companies with 50 or more employees were required to conduct harassment training. Now, that number’s been lowered to five employees.

Knepper said smaller companies may not have in-house counsel or HR, and therefore might not know the extent of California’s new requirements. And the new law impacts companies outside of California with employees in the state, Groff said.

“It’s just five or more [employees] period. Even before, when it was 50, if you had 50 nationally but just one in California, you still had to provide the anti-harassment training to your managers,” Groff said. “So when you’re looking at the threshold … it’s really total nationally.”

Don’t wait for state online training to become available

Smaller companies that lack the financial resources to develop a training of their own can use online, compliant training being developed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. But Groff said companies may want to start developing their own training, as she said it’s ”not certain” when DFEH’s will be made available. Good training should include interactive sessions and provide hypothetical scenarios.

“It’s probably a good idea to be planning now rather than waiting on when that state online training will become available, especially if you have a sizable employee population in California,” Groff said.

Related: 10 ways to protect against sexual harassment in the workplace

Caroline Spiezio (cspiezio@alm.com) covers the intersection of tech and law for our ALM Media sister publication, Corporate Counsel. She’s based in San Francisco. Find her on Twitter @CarolineSpiezio.