What employers are covered under California’s sexual harassment prevention training law?

Employers with five or more employees are required to provide sexual harassment prevention training to employees in California. This includes any employer who regularly receives services of five or more persons pursuant to a contract.

The employees do not need to work in the same location and not all of the employees need to work or reside in California. For example, if the employer has five employees in total, and only two employees work in California, the employer must provide sexual harassment training to the two employees who work in California, even if one or more of those employees do not reside in California.

When is the deadline to provide sexual harassment training to all employees?

Under the new law, covered employers must provide sexual harassment training by January 1, 2021.

Originally, the legislation required all employees to be trained by January 1, 2020. However, California enacted additional legislation (SB 778) in 2019 extending the training deadline to January 1, 2021.

Are employees required to be retrained?

All employees must be retrained once every two years.

Employers that provided training in 2019 are “not required to provide refresher training and education again until two years thereafter.” According to the California Department of Fair Employment & Housing (DFEH), an employer that trains its employees in 2019 must retrain two years later (before January 1, 2022).

When must new employees and new supervisors be trained?

Employers with 50 or more employees continue to have an obligation under current law to train all new supervisors within six months of assuming the position.

Beginning on January 1, 2021, sexual harassment training must be provided within six (6) months of hire for new non-supervisory employees, and supervisors must be trained within six (6) months of assuming a supervisory position.

A supervisor is anyone with the authority to hire, fire, assign, transfer, discipline, or reward other employees. A supervisor is also someone with the authority to effectively recommend (but not necessarily take) these actions if exercising that authority requires the use of independent judgment.