166 | 2024 Cal-Peculiarities ©2024 Seyfarth Shaw LLP www.seyfarth.com The required interactive training may be in the form of classroom training, webinar training, or other elearning, so long as the program will take the participant no less than two hours to complete.145 Electronic training meets the requirement of interactivity only if questions from participants are answered within two business days.146 As to supervisory training, the instruction must include questions and skill-building activities to assess learning, and “numerous hypothetical scenarios about harassment, each with one or more discussion questions so that supervisors remain engaged in the training.”147 As of 2020, California hotel and motel employers (excluding bed and breakfast inns) must provide at least 20 minutes of interactive human trafficking awareness training to employees likely to interact with human trafficking victims.148 California has also authorized—but does not require—the provision of “bystander intervention training.”149 Mandated reporters. California employees must provide training for “mandated reporters.” The California Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act requires that certain “mandated reporters” formally report suspected child abuse or neglect (including sexual abuse) to law enforcement authorities. As of 2021 there are two new categories of mandated reporters: (1) a “human resource employee” (someone who is designated to accept discrimination complaints) and (2) an adult whose duties require direct contact with and supervision of minors in the workplace. Employers must train the mandated reporters on identifying and reporting child abuse and neglect. The training requirement may be met by completing on-line four-hour training for mandated reporters offered by the Office of Child Abuse Prevention in the State Department of Social Services.150 Mandated reporters, before starting employment, must sign a form promising to comply with the Act and its reporting obligations.151 Anti-bullying training. The required training must address “abusive conduct,” defined broadly to include malicious conduct that a reasonable person would find “hostile, offense, and unrelated to an employer’s legitimate business interests.” Examples include “repeated infliction of verbal abuse, such as the use of derogatory remarks, insults, and epithets, conduct that a reasonable person would find “threatening, intimating, or humiliating,” and the “gratuitous sabotage or undermining of a person’s work performance.”152 Property service worker training. Under the Property Service Workers Protection Act, California companies that contract to provide janitorial services and thereby retain janitors as either employees or independent contractors must establish biennial sexual violence and harassment prevention training for those workers.153 In 2019, the Legislature added the Janitor Survivor Empowerment Act, requiring the Director of the Department of Industrial Relations to organize a training advisory committee to identify qualified organizations and trainers for janitorial employers to use in providing biennial, in-person sexual violence and harassment prevention training for janitorial workers.154 Talent agency training. Talent agencies must provide education on sexual harassment prevention, retaliation, and reporting resources to adult artists, to parents or legal guardians of minors aged 14-17, and to age-eligible minors, within 90 days of retention.155 Adult-supervised training of minors in entertainment industry. California minors in the entertainment industry and their parents or guardian are to receive appropriate training regarding sexual harassment in order to protect the safety of minors. More specifically, the parent or guardian of a minor (age 14-17) issued with an entertainment work permit must (1) ensure, by accompanying the minor, that the minor completes training in sexual harassment
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