CA Harassment Training Requirements and Penalties

California harassment training requirements apply to every employer with five or more workers: supervisors must complete at least two hours of sexual harassment prevention training and nonsupervisory employees at least one hour, repeated every two years. The rules come from Government Code section 12950.1, expanded by Senate Bill 1343, and they dictate not just who gets trained but what the training covers, who can deliver it, and how long the records have to be kept.¹

Which Employers Are Covered

The five-employee threshold sweeps in more people than a payroll headcount suggests. Full-time, part-time, temporary, and seasonal employees all count. So do independent contractors, volunteers, and unpaid interns, even though those individuals themselves are not required to be trained.² A business with two paid employees and four unpaid interns has crossed the line and owes training to those two employees.

The state, its political subdivisions, and cities are covered regardless of workforce size. Anyone acting as an agent of an employer carries the same obligation.¹

Employees who work outside California do not need to be trained, but they still count toward the five-employee threshold. An employer with three workers in Los Angeles and three in Nevada must train the California-based three.³

Who Has to Be Trained

Every employee working in California for a covered employer participates. The supervisor/nonsupervisor split only affects the minimum number of hours; both groups follow the same recurring schedule.¹

Independent contractors, volunteers, and unpaid interns are not legally required to receive the training. The Civil Rights Department recommends training them anyway as a best practice, since employers can be liable for harassment committed by nonemployees when they knew or should have known and failed to act.²

How Often Training Is Due

Two hours for supervisors, one hour for everyone else, every two years. The clock runs from the date of the employee’s last completed training or by the end of the next applicable training deadline.¹

New hires face tighter deadlines:

New nonsupervisory employees must be trained within six months of hire.
New supervisors must be trained within six months of taking on the supervisory role, whether they were hired in or promoted.
Temporary and seasonal workers hired for less than six months must be trained within 30 calendar days of hire or within 100 hours worked, whichever comes first.¹

Training does not have to happen in one sitting. It can be broken into shorter segments as long as the total meets the minimum hours.³

Portability Between Employers

If an employee received compliant training within the past two years from a previous, alternate, or joint employer, the new employer does not have to retrain that person until the two-year cycle runs out.³ Ask new hires whether they trained recently and request their certificate before scheduling a session that isn’t required.

What the Training Has to Cover

California specifies the content. At a minimum, every program must address the definitions of unlawful harassment under FEHA and Title VII; the types of prohibited verbal, physical, and visual conduct; remedies available to victims and the liability employers and individuals may face; strategies for preventing harassment; supervisors’ duty to report harassment, discrimination, and retaliation they learn about; practical examples delivered through role plays, case studies, or group discussions; the complaint process and its limited confidentiality; the elements of an anti-harassment policy (with the employer’s own policy or a sample provided during training); and the employer’s investigation obligations after a complaint.⁴

The training must also cover harassment based on gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.³

Abusive Conduct

Every program must separately address abusive conduct, sometimes called workplace bullying. The regulations describe it as conduct undertaken with malice that a reasonable person would find hostile or offensive and that has no connection to the employer’s legitimate business interests. Examples include repeated verbal abuse such as derogatory remarks or insults, behavior that a reasonable person would find threatening or humiliating, and the deliberate sabotage of someone’s work. A single incident doesn’t qualify unless it is especially severe.⁵

How Training Can Be Delivered

The regulations require “effective interactive training” and approve four formats:

Classroom: in-person instruction by a qualified trainer, away from the employee’s usual work area.
E-learning: individualized computer-based training built by a qualified trainer and an instructional designer, with a way for employees to reach a trainer who responds within two business days.
Webinar: a live internet seminar taught by a qualified trainer in real time, with documentation that each remote participant attended in full and engaged with the interactive content.
CRD online courses: the Civil Rights Department’s own free courses also satisfy the requirement.⁴

Audio and video tools can supplement any of these formats but cannot replace them on their own. Every session must include questions that assess learning and skill-building activities using hypothetical harassment scenarios.⁴

Who Can Lead It

Trainers must fit at least one of three categories: attorneys admitted to any state bar for at least two years whose practice includes employment law under FEHA or Title VII; HR professionals or harassment prevention consultants with at least two years of practical experience designing training, responding to complaints, investigating, or advising on prevention; or professors or instructors at law schools, colleges, or universities with at least 20 instruction hours or two years of employment law teaching experience.⁵ Multiple trainers can be combined to cover the required qualifications collectively, and someone short on experience can team-teach with a fully qualified trainer.

Free Courses From the CRD

The Civil Rights Department publishes free online courses for both supervisory and nonsupervisory employees, available in English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Tagalog, with optional closed captioning. Employees can complete them on a computer or mobile device and generate a certificate of completion at the end. The CRD cannot reissue certificates later, and its license prohibits copying the courses or loading them into a third-party learning management system.⁶

Records Employers Have to Keep

Training documentation must be retained for at least two years. The required records include the names of employees trained, the date of each session, sign-in sheets if used, copies of any certificates of attendance or completion, the type of training provided, copies of all written or recorded training materials, and the name of the training provider.² E-learning and webinar providers must also keep the questions employees submitted and the responses they received, along with a copy of any webinar and its materials, for two years.⁴

What Happens If You Don’t Train

California law requires every employer to take all reasonable steps to prevent harassment.⁷ Skipping the required training cuts against any claim that the employer met that duty. In a harassment lawsuit, missing training records are exactly the sort of gap plaintiff’s counsel uses to argue that prevention wasn’t taken seriously.

The Civil Rights Department can also investigate noncompliance and seek corrective action. An employer that skipped training cannot lean on its anti-harassment policy as a defense when a supervisor’s conduct leads to a lawsuit, because the training requirement is treated as part of the employer’s core prevention duty. Individual supervisors can face personal liability for harassment they commit, regardless of whether the employer knew.⁷

1
California Legislative Information. California Code GOV 12950.1 – Sexual Harassment Prevention Training
2
Civil Rights Department. Sexual Harassment Prevention Training: Information For Employers
3
Civil Rights Department. Sexual Harassment Prevention Training For Employees
4
Cornell Law Institute. Cal. Code Regs. Tit. 2, 11024 – Required Training and Education
5
New York Codes, Rules and Regulations. California Code of Regulations Title 2, 11024
6
California Civil Rights Department. Sexual Harassment Prevention Training
7
California Legislative Information. California Code GOV 12940 – Employer Liability