An Overview
California law requires all employers of 5 or more employees to provide training to its supervisory and non-supervisory employees on Sexual Harassment and Abusive Conduct Prevention every 2 years. Non- supervisory employees must receive at least one hour of training and supervisory employees must receive at least 2 hours of training. The law requires the training to include practical examples of harassment based on gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation. Employers must retain records for at least 2 years. Employers must also provide employees with a poster or fact sheet developed by the EEOC(Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) or DFEH(Department of Fair Employment and Housing) regarding sexual harassment (if you do not have these All Food Safety can provide them for you for a small added fee).
Because of how rapidly laws are changing, our experience in teaching Harassment and Abusive Conduct has demonstrated to us that most businesses are operating under outdated laws or notions of what is considered harassment. For example, in a courtroom a business may be found guilty of a term called “should have known”. The term “should have known” is used to describe actions or behaviors that management should have observed from the employee’s without the employee having to take the initiative to speak up about any harassment concerns. “Should have known” Changes can even be considered changes in moods, attitude, work ethic, and even the quality of work that the employee is producing.
Overall, taking our course helps mitigate the liability being placed on the establishments owner by giving the supervisors and managers “legitimate power”. The term “legitimate power” refers to formal authority given to a person within an organization. Along with the formal authority that supervisors possess they are also held accountable for the wellbeing of any employee under their charge. A prerequisite for transferring liability from the owner to the supervisors/managers through legitimate power is for them to be trained in Sexual Harassment and Abusive Conduct Prevention. Taking our course will fulfill this prerequisite and provide more legal protection in favor of the establishments owner.
The core of our Sexual Harassment coursework involves a review of real cases related to sexual harassment law suits and claims. We will go through each claim and examine how the workplace harassment escalated to a law suit/claim, but most importantly which preventative measures can be taken to avoid legal liability and/or action.