DFEH RELEASES NEW ONLINE TRAINING TO PREVENT SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN THE WORKPLACE

Sacramento – The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) today launched a free anti-sexual harassment training for supervisory employees. The online training can be used to meet a legal requirement that requires employers having five or more employees to provide at least two hours of training and education regarding sexual harassment prevention to all supervisory employees in California by January 1, 2021. The online training is available on DFEH’s website(https://www.calcivilrights.ca.gov/shpt/). This legal requirement is contained in Government Code section 12950.1

In May 2020, DFEH successfully launched a one-hour training for non-supervisory employees. The non-supervisory and supervisory trainings are currently available in English, and DFEH expects to release versions in Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Korean in the coming weeks. DFEH’s new trainings are interactive and optimized for mobile devices, and are accessible for persons with disabilities.

“DFEH is pleased to continue to expand its library of online trainings designed to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace,” said DFEH Director Kevin Kish. “Thousands of employees across the state have already successfully completed DFEH’s trainings, and we expect many more employers will utilize these free resources to meet their legal obligations.”

Using story-based learning, DFEH’s trainings feature numerous harassment scenarios drawn from real cases and representing a wide range of industries. They emphasize the importance of creating and maintaining respectful workplaces and provide tools and strategies for bystanders to disrupt patterns of sexual harassment and other inappropriate behavior. The trainings also highlight the ways in which sexual harassment can intersect with other forms of discrimination, and include modules on gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.

The trainings incorporate two short films written and directed by Sigal Avin, and Executive Produced by and starring David Schwimmer along with Zazie Beetz, Joseph Sikora, and Grace Gummer.

The California Civil Rights Department (CRD) is the state agency charged with enforcing California’s civil rights laws. CRD’s mission is to protect the people of California from unlawful discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, and state-funded programs and activities, and from hate violence and human trafficking. For more information, visit calcivilrights.ca.gov.

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