On October 17, 2018, the New York State Department of Labor (NYSDOL) released foreign language resources for employers and employees regarding the state’s new sexual harassment prevention laws and the necessary policy and training documents. As discussed in our August 29, 2018 Alert, earlier this year, New York State passed several new laws aimed at expanding employee awareness of sexual harassment. Among the new requirements placed on employers is mandatory annual anti-sexual harassment training and an anti-sexual harassment policy, which were required to be implemented by October 9, 2018. The state previously published English versions of a Model Sexual Harassment Policy, Model Complaint Form, Training Requirements, and FAQs, available at https://www.ny.gov/combating-sexual-harassment-workplace/employers.

In addition to the previously released English language version, these materials have now been released in the following languages: Chinese, Haitian-Creole, Korean, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Spanish and are available at https://www.ny.gov/combating-sexual-harassment-workplace/combat-harassment-translations.

Employers are required to provide policy and training materials in an employee’s primary language. If the NYSDOL has not translated a document into the language spoken by an employee, an employer is considered in compliance by providing the employee English language documents.