Employers in California need to be aware of the State’s new amendments to the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) regulations that went into effect April 1, 2016. These regulations greatly expand requirements for complying with CA’s mandatory sexual harassment training procedures. Prior regulations established numerous compliance requirements after CA’s AB1825 went into effect in 2005. Now, there are more.
While other means of training, such as audio, video, or computer technology, may be used to supplement to classroom, webinar and e-learning trainings, they cannot alone fulfill AB 1825’s training requirements. So, employers may not rely solely on these methods.
Further, in addition to previously outlined requirements for being a “qualified trainer”, the trainer must now have the ability to train supervisors on identifying behavior that may constitute unlawful harassment, discrimination, and retaliation under both California and federal law, as opposed to just defining these concepts. Additionally, trainers must be able to train on supervisors’ obligations to report harassing, discriminatory, or retaliatory behavior of which they become aware.
There are also more stringent requirements for tracking compliance, including:
- E-learning– Requiring trainers to maintain all written questions received and responses or guidance provided for a period of two years after the date of the response.
- Webinar– Requiring employers to keep a copy of the webinar, all written materials used by the trainer, and all written questions submitted during the webinar. Employers also must document all written responses or guidance the trainer provided during the webinar. These records must be kept for two years after the date of the webinar.
- Documentation– In addition to previous recordkeeping, employers now must keep all documentation of the training provided, including the names of those trained, the date of training, the trainer, the sign-in sheet, a copy of any certificates of attendance or completion issued, and a copy of all written or recorded materials.
There are additional content requirements, including a greatly expanded list of topics for discussion and examples of methods to be used by trainers to engage trainees, such as examples of questions, pre and post training quizzes, hypotheticals, scenarios, as well as other examples of good, interactive training tools. These emphasize and ensure that the training is actually interactive and focused on supervisors being able to actually apply what they learned.
What this means to you: Employers should ensure their training procedures and material content are reviewed carefully to ensure they are up to date with these new requirements. The new FEHA regulations dramatically add to the challenges employers face in training supervisors and documenting compliance with the mandatory CA sexual harassment training requirements. Fair Measures and its trainers are up to date on the topics that need to be covered, and assisting employers with meeting their compliance and documentation obligations.
Help your employer meet its requirements under the law and FEHA regulations by contacting us today at 800-458-2778 and booking Harassment Prevention training for your supervisors.
Posted 05-10-2016
Information here is correct at the time it is posted. Case decisions cited here may be reversed. Please do not rely on this information without consulting an attorney first.
