Workplace Violence Training in California: SB 553 Timing and Records

If you employ people in California, you almost certainly have to provide workplace violence training. Labor Code Section 6401.9, added by Senate Bill 553 and in effect since July 1, 2024, requires nearly every employer in the state to adopt a written Workplace Violence Prevention Plan and to train every covered employee on it, both at the outset and at least once a year after that.¹ Skip it or do it halfway, and Cal/OSHA can cite you up to $25,000 per serious violation.²

Which Employers Have to Train

The default rule is broad. Section 6401.9 applies to all employers, employees, places of employment, and employer-provided housing in California.³ There is no industry carve-out for retail, hospitality, manufacturing, or office work. If you have employees in California, assume you are covered until you can match a specific exemption.

A handful of narrow exemptions exist:³

Healthcare facilities, services, and operations already covered by Cal/OSHA’s separate healthcare workplace violence standard at Section 3342 of Title 8 of the California Code of Regulations.
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation facilities that comply with the general Injury and Illness Prevention Program regulation at Section 3203, Title 8 CCR.
POST-compliant law enforcement agencies whose facilities also meet Section 3203.
Employees teleworking from a location of their own choosing that is not under the employer’s control. A fully remote workforce falls outside this section.
Workplaces where fewer than 10 employees work at any given time and the site is not accessible to the public, provided the employer complies with Section 3203.

Even an exemption is not absolute. Cal/OSHA can issue a special order requiring any exempt employer to comply with Section 6401.9 if circumstances warrant it.³

What the Training Must Cover

Generic workplace safety content pulled off a shelf will not satisfy the law. Training must be tied to your written plan and your specific workplace hazards. Under Section 6401.9, every training must address all of the following:

The employer’s Workplace Violence Prevention Plan, including how an employee can get a free copy.
The statutory definition of workplace violence and its four types: criminal intent by an outsider (Type 1), customer or client violence (Type 2), worker-on-worker violence (Type 3), and violence by someone with a personal relationship to an employee (Type 4).
How to report incidents, threats, or concerns to the employer or law enforcement without fear of retaliation.
The specific workplace violence hazards employees face in their roles, and the corrective measures the employer has put in place.
How to seek help to prevent or respond to violence, including strategies to avoid physical harm.
The purpose of the violent incident log, how employees can access a copy, and how to access other related records.
The employee’s role in developing and implementing the plan.
The employer’s specific protocols for responding to a violent situation.

The definition itself is wide. Workplace violence includes any act or threat of violence at a place of employment, whether or not the employee is physically injured, and threats can be verbal, written, texted, posted on social media, or communicated through behavior, so long as they convey or are reasonably perceived to convey an intent to cause physical harm and serve no legitimate purpose.³ Lawful self-defense and defense of others are excluded.

If an employee leaves the session unable to describe how to report a threat at your specific site, the training did not do its job, no matter how polished the video was.

When Training Has to Happen

The statute sets several trigger points, not just an annual cycle:³

Initial training for every employee when the plan is first established. For employers covered since July 1, 2024, this should already be complete.
Refresher training for every employee at least once per year.
Additional training whenever a new workplace violence hazard is identified, whether through an incident, an operational change, or a newly recognized pattern.
Additional training on any changes made to the Workplace Violence Prevention Plan.

New hires should be trained during onboarding. Holding a February hire until the next annual session leaves both the worker and the employer exposed in the meantime.

How the Training Must Be Delivered

Format is flexible, but one element is not. Training must include opportunities for interactive discussion with a person knowledgeable about the employer’s specific plan.⁴ A passive webinar with no way to ask questions does not meet the standard. Live in-person sessions, virtual meetings with a real Q&A component, and interactive online modules can all qualify, as long as employees can genuinely raise questions about their own site and get real answers.

Materials have to fit the workforce. Content, vocabulary, and language should match the educational level and literacy of the employees receiving the instruction. For a multilingual workforce, that usually means providing the materials in more than one language.

Records You Have to Keep

Cal/OSHA will not take your word that training happened. Training records must be kept for at least one year and must include the dates of the training, a summary of its content, the names and qualifications of the trainers, and the names and job titles of everyone who attended.⁵

Three other categories of workplace violence records carry a longer, five-year retention period:⁵

Records of workplace violence hazard identification, evaluation, and correction.
Violent incident logs.
Incident investigation records.

All of these records have to be made available to employees, their authorized representatives, and Cal/OSHA upon request, without cost, within 15 calendar days.⁵ The one-year minimum for training records is a floor. Because the related hazard and incident records already have to be held for five years, many employers simply keep everything on the same five-year cycle.

What Noncompliance Costs

Cal/OSHA enforces Section 6401.9 by citing directly to the Labor Code.¹ The 2025 penalty amounts are:²

Serious violations: up to $25,000 per violation.
Willful or repeat violations: up to $162,851 per violation.
General and regulatory violations, including posting and recordkeeping failures: up to $16,285.

Each deficiency can be a separate citation. An employer with no written plan, no training records, and no violent incident log is not looking at one fine but several. Willful citations, where Cal/OSHA concludes the employer knowingly ignored the requirement, carry a cap more than six times the serious-violation figure. A compliant program, built around a real plan and interactive training delivered on schedule and documented, is the only reliable way to stay out of that range.

1
California Department of Industrial Relations. Workplace Violence Prevention for General Industry
2
California Department of Industrial Relations. Cal/OSHA Increases Civil Penalty Amounts for 2025
3
California Legislative Information. California Code LAB 6401.9
4
California Department of Industrial Relations. Fact Sheet – Workplace Violence Prevention in General Industry for Employers
5
California Department of Industrial Relations. Cal/OSHA Workplace Violence Prevention for General Industry