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Sexual Harassment Training Requirements in California
The training duty is specific: who must provide it, how long it is, how often it repeats, and what it has to cover.
General education for California employees—not legal advice. Your facts and deadlines control. This is not a Workplace Rights Advocacy case result. It explains the Civil Rights Department workplace notice in plain English. It is not the poster and it is not a complete statement of every exception.
Who must provide training
Government Code § 12950.1 requires an employer with five or more employees to train its California employees. The Civil Rights Department treats the headcount as employees anywhere, not only people sitting in one California office. Public employers are covered as well. The workplace notice states the same five-employee and public-employer line.
How much, how often, and how soon
Supervisors need at least two hours. Nonsupervisory employees need at least one hour. The training has to be classroom or other effective interactive training, and it repeats every two years. New nonsupervisory employees must be trained within six months of hire. A new supervisor must be trained within six months of becoming a supervisor. The hours can be split into shorter segments.
Department rules for short-term workers are tighter. An employee hired for less than six months is generally trained within 30 days or 100 hours worked, whichever comes first. Someone who works fewer than 30 days and fewer than 100 hours need not be trained.
What the training must include
The training has to cover federal and state harassment law, prevention and correction, and the remedies available to victims, with practical examples. It must include prevention of abusive conduct. It must include harassment based on gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation, taught by someone with knowledge in those areas.
Beginning January 1, 2028, Assembly Bill 1803 also requires an anti-hate-speech component in this training. That piece is not in effect yet. The two-hour and one-hour duties above are already in effect.
A company that skips training has a prevention problem. Training records matter when someone later says the employer looked the other way. See sexual harassment.
Related: Sexual Harassment · Failure to Prevent Harassment · Duty to Prevent Harassment · Workplace Rights Notice