HARASSMENT PREVENTION TRAINING LAW NOW TAKES EFFECT IN 2021

In August, 2019 SB 778 was passed and went into effect, clearing up remaining issues from SB 1343, 2018’s bill that made significant changes to California’s harassment prevention training requirements, namely greatly increasing the number of employers who must provide training and establishing a training deadline of January 1, 2020. SB 778 pushed the original harassment training deadline back one year; now, employers with five or more employees must provide one hour of sexual harassment prevention training to nonsupervisory employees and two hours of such training to supervisors by January 1, 2021.

Employers who provided training to employees in 2019 aren’t required to provide it again until two years from the time the employee was trained.  Employers who provided training in 2018 must provide training in 2020 to maintain the two-year cycle and comply with the new deadline. Employers who trained employees in 2017 under the prior training law should provide training in 2019 in order to maintain their two-year training cycle.