By January 1, 2021, California employers with five or more employees are required to have provided interactive harassment prevention training to all employees in California, both supervisory and non-supervisory. After considerable delay, California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) recently released online training to meet the harassment training requirement for non-supervisors. The training is provided at no cost to employers. 

The non-supervisory online harassment prevention training can be found here. Online training for non-supervisors is currently available in English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese and Tagalog. The DFEH announced it will also be releasing online harassment prevention training for supervisors in the near future. 

Non-supervisory employees must receive at least one hour of harassment prevention training, while supervisory employees must receive at least two hours’ training. Harassment training for both non-supervisors and supervisors must be provided every two years, and within six months of hire or promotion to supervisory status.

We believe there is no substitute for in-person training. However, for employers with a high rate of turnover, the on-line training offered by the DFEH will serve to check the box on a statutory requirement. For all other employers, and certainly for supervisors whose duty it is to know and enforce anti-harassment and discrimination rules, in-person training should be the first choice. 

The author would like to gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Joanne Warriner.