Training and employee-relations support for California teams.
California’s harassment prevention training threshold begins at five, with counting rules and role-specific requirements that deserve careful attention. We connect training and records with management guidance, accessible reporting, thorough investigations, and proactive quarterly engagement, giving your team experienced support for employee matters throughout the year.
Counting to five is less obvious than it sounds.
California's threshold is five, not fifteen, and the arithmetic that gets you there catches people out.
Under fifteen people is not the same as exempt.
Part-time employees count the same as full-time. Temporary and seasonal workers count. Unpaid interns and volunteers count. Qualifying independent contractors count toward the five even though they do not themselves have to be trained. And there is no requirement that those five work in the same place, or in California at all. The regulator's own worked example is an employer with two full-time employees and six unpaid interns, which is over the line and owes training to its two employees.
So the practical test is not how many people are on payroll in California. Review the people who count toward the employer threshold across locations, then identify which California employees must be trained.
Below five there is still something worth knowing. FEHA's prohibition on harassment itself applies to employers with one or more employees. A four-person California business is not required to run this training, but it is still answerable for harassment, which is a different question from whether a training statute names you.
What California requires the training to cover
- Federal and state law on preventing and correcting sexual harassment, and the remedies available to victims
- Practical examples of harassment, discrimination, and retaliation, delivered through role play, case study, or discussion
- Harassment based on gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation, with practical examples
- Prevention of abusive conduct, covered in a meaningful manner rather than in passing
- Supervisors' obligation to report, and what to do when a supervisor is personally accused
- The limits of confidentiality, the employer's duty to investigate, and available remedial measures
- The essential elements of an anti-harassment policy, with each employee given a copy to read and acknowledge
- Delivery by a trainer with genuine expertise in preventing harassment, discrimination, and retaliation
The full structure, scaled to your size
Ongoing support for your small team, with training informed by California requirements. One-time onboarding establishes the relationship; consulting, thorough complaint investigations, and proactive quarterly engagement keep it working.
Training That Meets the State's Own Spec
Role-specific training is organized around applicable requirements and documented by employee. We help keep the training record connected to your reporting, management guidance, and response process.
Employee Reporting Hotline
Employees can raise concerns by phone, email, or in the app, including when the concern involves the owner or manager. Reports are documented and handled with care, with information shared as needed to investigate and respond.
Management Guidance
Use us for write-ups, termination reviews, and difficult employee conversations. We help managers consider the facts and supporting documentation before action, reducing the need to reconstruct decisions later.
Proactive Quarterly Engagement
We engage proactively each quarter to discuss emerging concerns and business changes. The relationship stays active between complaints, giving owners and managers an experienced resource they can use.
Policy, Notice, and Documentation
Policies, notices, training records, and complaint documentation support a consistent response. Organized records also make it easier to prepare an EEOC charge response or position statement when needed.
Thorough Investigations
When complaints come to us, we investigate thoroughly and impartially, gathering relevant accounts and records. Your leadership receives documented findings to support decisions, while your team gains capacity for other work.
California tells you the hours, the cadence, and the content.
Two hours for supervisors, one for everyone else, once every two years, with a six-month window for new hires and newly promoted supervisors. Seasonal staff hired for under six months get a tighter deadline: 30 days or 100 hours worked, whichever lands first. Training has to be genuinely interactive, and material a person merely reads does not qualify. There is little room for interpretation here, which makes it straightforward to get right and obvious when it is not.
The training rule and the harassment rule have different thresholds.
FEHA prohibits harassment at one or more employees, while the training mandate starts at five. A four-person employer therefore has no training obligation and full exposure to a harassment claim, which is the least comfortable position in the state. It is also the position where a documented policy, a reporting channel, and a record of reasonable care do the most work, because there is no statutory checklist to point at instead.
Read what California requires before you buy anything about it.
The California compliance page covers the threshold, duration, cadence, content, recordkeeping, and penalties, with the statute cited so you can check it yourself.
Common questions
We have eight employees in California. Are we actually covered?
Do unpaid interns count toward the five?
We have people in California and in other states. Who gets trained?
What is the penalty if we do not train?
Someone we hired was trained at their last job. Do we retrain them?
Give your small team experienced support.
Tell us about your California workforce and the employee matters taking your time. We will explain the training, reporting, management guidance, and investigation support available through an ongoing relationship.