California Employers & Required (but cost free!) Sexual Harassment Prevention Training

11.6.20

If you are a California employer with five or more employees, you must provide sexual harassment prevention training to all employees by January 1 and every two years after that. With the holiday season approaching, getting properly trained is one more thing you must cross off your to-do list.

Good news: the state has created interactive training courses that employers can use for free. One hour trainings for nonsupervisory employees and two hour trainings for supervisory employees are available in English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Tagalog and are accessible for persons with disabilities. By January 1st, you should ensure that all of your employees provide you a certificate reflecting their completion of the course appropriate for them.

Supervisors are those who have authority to hire, transfer, suspend, layoff, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward or discipline other employees, or the responsibility to direct them, or to adjust their grievances, or effectively to recommend that action if the exercise of that authority is not of a merely routine or clerical nature, but requires the use of independent judgment, and they must take the two-hour course. Everyone else must take the one-hour course. Employers should pay non-exempt employees for their time spent completing this training.

You need to keep these training records for at least two years (at which point, everyone will need to be re-trained). In addition, you need to provide employees with certain state-approved written information regarding sexual harassment. You can use the English-language fact sheet available here or others here under “Sexual Harassment Prevention: The Facts about Sexual Harassment”. You must ensure new supervisory employees take this training within six months of assuming their supervisory position and that new nonsupervisory employees are trained within six months of hire.

At the end of the training, each employee will have the option to utilize a certificate of completion, which you will want to have and keep for your records. Employees will have the option to save, print, take a screenshot, or take a photo of the certificate. When you communicate with your employees about this training requirement, be sure to provide direction about how each employee should provide the certificate to you as the website cannot email you a replacement certificate.

We recommend a simple communication to non-supervisory employees as follows:

By __________ [obviously, before December 31, but you probably want to make it earlier so you can confirm compliance before New Years Eve], 2020, you must complete a one-hour on-line training course regarding sexual harassment prevention. We will pay you for your time to take this course, so be sure it is reflected on your time records. To take this course, use any computer or mobile device and go to https://www.dfeh.ca.gov/shpt/, select “continue” at the bottom, select your primary language, then select “non-supervisory” and start the training by hitting the “play” button which is usually in the bottom left corner. When you are done, you will be able to save, print, take a screenshot, or take a photo of the certificate. Please do so then email it to [insert email address of appropriate record-keeper here]. Note that the website will not create a replacement certificate for you, so once you are done, please keep a copy of your certificate for yourself in addition to emailing it as requested. Also, please see the attached fact sheet about sexual harassment.

And we recommend a simple communication to supervisory employees as follows:

By __________, 2020, you must complete a two-hour on-line training course regarding sexual harassment prevention. If you are a non-exempt employee, we will pay you for your time to take this course, so be sure it is reflected on your time records. To take this course, use any computer or mobile device and go to https://www.dfeh.ca.gov/shpt/, select “continue” at the bottom, select your primary language, then select “supervisory” and start the training by hitting the “play” button which is usually in the bottom left corner. When you are done, you will be able to save, print, take a screenshot, or take a photo of the certificate. Please do so then email it to [insert email address of appropriate record-keeper here]. Note that the website will not create a replacement certificate for you, so once you are done, please keep a copy of your certificate for yourself in addition to emailing it as requested. Also, please see the attached fact sheet about sexual harassment.

If you have any questions about this process, please contact Ross SchwartzDick Semerdjian, Kevin Cauley, Sarah Evans or John Schena.