AB 1825 -- Sexual Harassment Law

California businesses with 50 or more employees, including those outside California, are required to provide supervisors within the state of California with two hours of sexual harassment training every two years. The minimum employee count of 50 includes temporary service employees and "persons providing services pursuant to a contract" in its workforce. The "contractors" must be counted if they provide services for each working day in 20 consecutive weeks in the current calendar year or preceding calendar year.

In addition, the law requires training for all supervisors within six months of becoming supervisors, and providing them with at least two hours of anti-harassment training every two years thereafter. An expanding business must train supervisors within six months of reaching 50 employees.

Content of Training
The training must include information and practical guidance regarding federal and state sexual harassment laws, including harassment prevention and correction, and remedies available to victims. It must be designed to 1) assist California employers in changing or modifying workplace behaviors that create or contribute to "sexual harassment" as that term is defined in California and federal law; and 2) develop, foster and encourage a set of values in supervisory employees who complete mandated training and education that will assist them in preventing and effectively responding to incidents of sexual harassment. It must include but is not limited to:

• The definition of unlawful sexual harassment under California and federal law, which may be accompanied by a definition and training about other forms of harassment covered under state law and how harassment of an employee can violate their rights as a member of more than one protected class
• State and federal statutory provisions and case law principles concerning the prohibition against in the prevention of unlawful sexual harassment in employment
• The types of conduct that constitute sexual harassment
• Remedies available for sexual harassment
• Strategies to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace
• Practical examples such as factual scenarios taken from case law, news and media accounts, hypothetical workplace situations and other sources which illustrate sexual harassment, discrimination and retaliation using role-playing, case studies and group discussions
• The limited confidentiality of the complaint process
• Resources for victims of unlawful sexual harassment such as to whom they should report any alleged sexual harassment
• The employer's obligation to conduct an effective workplace investigation of a harassment complaint
• Training on what to do if the supervisor is personally accused of harassment
• The essential elements of an anti-harassment policy and how to utilize it if a harassment complaint filed. Either the employer's policy or a sample policy must be provided to the supervisors. Regardless of whether the employer's policy is used as part of the training, the employer shall give each supervisor a copy of its anti-harassment policy and require each supervisor to read and to acknowledge receipt of that policy.

Interactivity Required
The training must be "interactive," meaning that video training would not be sufficient without discussion, role-playing, a question-and-answer session or other similar techniques led by a qualified trainer. Web-based training that includes interactive components provided by qualified organizations will meet the law's requirements. Relative to interactivity, the regulations:

• Specify that training must use examples that illustrate the course content and involve the supervisor through questions, problem-solving and quizzes to insure that the information is understood. Require that eLearning programs take the supervisor no less than two hours to complete. They must be written, developed and approved by an instructional designer (an individual with expertise in current instructional best practices, and who develops the training content based upon material provided by a subject matter expert), a qualified trainer or a subject matter expert.
• Require an eLearning program to provide a link, or directions on how, to contact directly trainers or educators, either working for the employer or retained by the e-learning provider. These trainers or educators shall be available to answer questions and to provide guidance and assistance on harassment training issues within a reasonable period of time after the supervisor asks the question, but no less than two business days after the question is asked.
• Require that webinars be taught by a qualified trainer. An employer utilizing a webinar must document and demonstrate that each supervisor who was not physically present in the same room as the trainer nonetheless attended the entire training and actively participated with the training’s interactive content, discussion questions, hypothetical scenarios, quizzes, tests and activities. The webinar must provide the supervisors an opportunity to ask questions, to have them answered and otherwise to seek guidance and assistance.
• Mandate that, for all training methods, the instruction must include questions that assess learning, skill-building activities that assess the supervisor's application and understanding of content learned, and numerous hypothetical scenarios about harassment, each with one or more discussion questions so that supervisors remain engaged in the training. Minimum training segments for classroom and webinar training must be one-half hour. eLearning programs may allow supervisors to pause at any point so long as the total program is at least two hours duration.

Qualified Trainers
A "Qualified Trainer" is a trainer, or educator, who is qualified to provide sexual harassment training for supervisors and has the training and experience about the following:

• What unlawful harassment, discrimination and retaliation are as defined by California and federal law
• What steps to take when harassing behavior occurs in the workplace
• How to report harassment complaints
• How to respond to a harassment complaint
• The employer’s obligation to conduct a workplace investigation of a harassment complaint
• What constitutes retaliation and how to prevent it
• Essential components of an anti-harassment policy
• The effect of harassment on harassed employees, coworkers, harassers and employers.

Documenting and Tracking
Employers are permitted to use either of two methods or a combination of the two methods to track compliance:

• Individual Tracking: An employer may track its training requirement for each supervisory employee, measured two years from the date of completion of the last training of the individual supervisor.
• Training year Tracking: An employer may designate a "training year" in which it trains its supervisory employees and thereafter must again retrain all of its supervisors by the end of the next "training year," two years later, even those newly hired or promoted supervisors that received training in the prior year. Under the training year method, no supervisor may be retrained any later than six months from the anniversary date of his/her last training. Training documentation must include the name of the person trained, the date of training, the type of training and the name of the training provider. It must be retained for a minimum of two years.