California live training mandates

Harassment prevention under Government Code 12950.1, expanded by SB 1343, applies to employers with five or more employees. That count includes part-time and temporary staff, and the threshold is lower than most employers assume.

Workplace violence prevention under Labor Code 6401.9, added by SB 553, applies to most California employers in general industry with narrow exceptions, and it does not use the five-employee threshold. An employer with four people can be outside the harassment mandate and inside the violence prevention mandate at the same time.

Harassment prevention: one hour for non-supervisory employees, two hours for supervisors, every two years, plus new hires and newly promoted supervisors within six months. Training must be interactive and delivered during paid working hours.

Workplace violence prevention: training when the plan is first established, then annually, plus additional training whenever a new hazard is identified or the plan is changed. The annual cadence is the one employers most often miss, because they mentally file it next to the two-year harassment cycle.

A written, site-specific Workplace Violence Prevention Plan. The statute requires training on your plan, so a generic awareness course does not discharge the duty on its own.

You also need a violent incident log kept separately from the plan, recording what happened, where, the type of violence, the circumstances and what was done. An employer with no incidents still needs the log to exist, because an empty log documents a working system and a missing log documents nothing.

Harassment prevention can, within limits. Online training meets the requirement if it is interactive and trainer-led or trainer-supported, with participant questions answered within two business days. A recording nobody can ask a question about does not qualify.

Workplace violence prevention is harder to satisfy this way, because the content is supposed to be your plan, your hazards and your reporting path. A course that never names your building is training on somebody else's workplace.

For harassment prevention: who was trained, when, for how long, in which category, and by whom. Employers are generally advised to retain this for a minimum of two years, and longer is better because the clock that matters in litigation is not the compliance clock.

For workplace violence prevention: training records, the plan and every revision of it, and the incident log. Cal/OSHA asking for these will not accept a harassment training roster, and the reverse is equally true.

Run the California training requirement checker. It takes your headcount and supervisor count and tells you which mandates apply and on what cycle. Nothing is emailed and nothing is stored.

If the answer is that both apply and neither has happened, the order is: write the plan, deliver violence prevention training on it, then check when harassment prevention is next due. I have written the longer version of why the supervisor half of that matters most in the manager who freezes.

Legal advice. I hold a J.D. and I am not your lawyer, this is not an attorney-client relationship, and nothing here is a legal conclusion about your specific situation.

It is a plain-language map of two requirements that are routinely conflated, current as of September 26, 2026. Statutes change and enforcement guidance changes with them. Verify against the current text before you rely on it.

Want both sessions delivered live?

I deliver harassment prevention and workplace violence prevention as real sessions, and I will tell you on the consult if you only need one.