California employers need to be aware of the new amendments to the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) regulations that went into effect April 1, 2016.

These regulations expand requirements for complying with California's mandatory sexual harassment training procedures. You may already be aware of the numerous compliance requirements that come along with AB 1825. Well, now there are more.

Below, we outline the major additions to AB 1825 compliance regulations.

Training Methods

While other means of training, such as audio, video, or computer technology, may be used to supplement in-person classroom training, webinar, and e-learning trainings, they cannot fulfill the sexual harassment prevention training requirements. So, employers may not rely solely on these methods.

There are also new requirements for the trainers themselves. To be a "qualified trainer", the trainer must now be able 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. Trainers must also be able to train on supervisors' obligations to report harassing, discriminatory, or retaliatory behavior of which they become aware.

Tracking Compliance

There are also more stringent requirements for tracking compliance.

E-learning
Requires 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
You must keep a copy of the webinar, all written materials used by the trainer, and all written questions submitted during the webinar. You 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
• date of training
• the trainer
• the sign-in sheet
• copy of any certificates of attendance or completion issued
• 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 Does This Mean For My Company?

Review your training procedures and material content carefully to ensure they are up to date to meet these new requirements.

These new FEHA regulations may seem like additional challenges on top of the already complex requirements employers face in training supervisors and documenting compliance for California's sexual harassment training, but you can count on us - HR Solutions Partners are ready to help. All our trainers are up to date on the expanded topics that need to be covered, and well-versed in assisting employers with meeting their compliance and documentation obligations, new and old.

If you have questions about AB 1825 requirements, please Contact Us.

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