As a sexual harassment prevention trainer who has many California clients, I’ve been keeping an eye on SB 778. Good news for California companies – it just passed and was signed into law.

Some background: effective as of January 1, 2019, SB 1343 required companies of five or more to train all California employees in sexual harassment training by the end of 2019. The previous law, AB 1825, required training only California supervisors and only for companies of 50 more, so SB 1343 significantly extended California’s mandatory sexual harassment training requirements.

However, there was confusion as to companies who had provided AB 1825 or SB 1343 training in 2018. The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) had interpreted the law to require retraining everyone in 2019 even if they had had compliant training in 2018. (Many of us trainers thought that this was unnecessary, especially for supervisors who had been trained in 2018, since SB 1343 didn’t appear to change AB 1825’s supervisor training requirements.) Also, the Fair Employment and Housing Commission (FEHC) had not yet issued regulations on SB 1343, leading to additional confusion as to the specifics of the training content and method of delivery. Further, DFEH stated it wasn’t going to be able to post the training required of it until late 2019.

So what does this new law mean for companies doing business in California?

1. A company that hasn’t yet provided SB 1343 anti-harassment training, or that provided SB 1343 or AB 1825 training in 2018, has until the end of 2020 now to do, instead of the end of 2019.
2. A company that does provide SB 1343 harassment prevention training in 2019 will not have to do so again until 2021.

This is indeed good news. Companies should provide harassment prevention training early and often, even if it isn’t required; however, requiring them to do so more often than necessary or too soon has drawbacks. As a practical matter, it also makes sure that good trainers aren’t so booked at the end of 2019 that they are unable to help new clients.

Source: The National Law Review, Sept. 3, 2019.