Press Releases
CALIFORNIA HARASSMENT TRAINING REGULATIONS ANNOUNCED
ELT's New Workplace Harassment Program Engineered to Comply
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 5, 2006
Contact:
Rebecca Peterson
415-962-3414
rpeterson@elt-inc.com
www.elt-inc.com
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (7/5/2006) — New regulations for AB 1825, California's mandatory harassment training law, were published Friday afternoon, June 30 by the Fair Employment and Housing Commission (FEHC). The regulations have created groundbreaking, stringent requirements for all forms of harassment training, especially e-learning. Although still in draft form, the regulations are the new benchmark by which employers will plan their training efforts to ensure compliance with the law, and to avoid crippling harassment and discrimination lawsuits.
As part of the special Advisory Committee to the FEHC, ELT, a leading provider of online compliance training solutions, has been instrumental in helping to write the AB 1825 regulations.
Concurrent with the regulations' release, ELT is announcing its latest Workplace Harassment e-learning program, legally engineered to comply with AB 1825, federal harassment laws and the laws of all 50 states. ELT's program demonstrates the critical components of 'interactivity' required by the new regulations. A demo of the new product can be viewed at /solutions/workplace_harassment2/workplace_harassment2.html.
AB 1825 requires California employers with 50 or more employees to provide all supervisors with harassment training every two years. The new regulations are expected to heavily influence harassment training standards outside of California. They will also impact broader compliance training mandates, such as the ethics training required for all employers under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines (FSGs). (Learn more) In fact, the FSG training mandate, which is promoting the wide-scale adoption of ethics and compliance training across the country, mirrors exact terms and phrases from the text of AB 1825 - such as the need for "effective" training. The new regulations further define such terms with unprecedented detail, setting a high bar for employers. They demonstrate why AB 1825 is the driving force behind broader compliance education standards.
Under the new guidelines, a rudimentary, "check the box" approach to compliance training is not effective, and no longer permissible. The AB 1825 regulations place intense scrutiny on online training programs with requirements such as:
- Forced interactivity through "questions that assess learning, skill-building activities that assess the supervisor's application and understanding of content learned, and numerous hypothetical scenarios about harassment."
- The ability to ask questions through an interactive link, and an established process to answer those questions within two business days.
- The ability to confirm that a program took no less than two hours to complete for each individual.
- Demonstrable expertise from the developers of a program, who must have legal education or practical experience in harassment, discrimination and retaliation training.
"AB 1825 is driving harassment training not just in California, but across the country," said Shanti Atkins, President & CEO of ELT. "While ELT has provided training solutions since 1997, demand for our products increased formidably in 2005 — the first mandatory AB 1825 training year. We are seeing a 300+% growth rate in course launches and completions. Companies with operations across the country are recognizing the critical importance of a national training program, which has been strongly encouraged by federal law since 1998. Offering excellent training in California, but not in other states actually creates potential risk for employers and sends an inconsistent and damaging message to employees. As importantly, training only California employees creates an attractive 'chink in the armor' to plaintiff's counsel in the event of harassment litigation."
As evidenced by the massive wave of inquiries ELT receives about how to deal with laws such as AB 1825, a great deal of confusion and misinformation exists around mandatory compliance training. "Clients come to ELT for the real facts about these issues," said Atkins. "They choose our rigorously tested solutions because our expertise is truly unmatched. We develop our programs hand-in-hand with Littler Mendelson, the world's largest employment law firm. We specialize in issues like harassment prevention, so that our development efforts are focused on employers' most important compliance needs. Our role in helping to draft the AB 1825 regulations demonstrates that we are actually shaping the standards by which our clients will be judged. Employers want this level of expertise and support because they understand the intense scrutiny now being placed on their compliance training programs. AB 1825 is just the beginning."
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ELT provides employers of all sizes and across multiple industries with online compliance training of unparalleled quality. Featured in the New York Times and Fortune Small Business Magazine as one of the premier online training providers, ELT's programs are now used by more than 1 million learners in leading companies across the United States. ELT's courseware is built upon the renowned legal expertise of the global law firms Littler Mendelson and Shearman & Sterling, using Legal EngineeringTM to help establish invaluable defenses to workplace litigation. Programs also feature cutting edge instructional design to provide a training experience that educates, entertains and engages. ELT helps employers to comply with mandatory training laws and regulations, such as California's new harassment training law (AB 1825) and the recently amended Federal Sentencing Guidelines. Demos of ELT's courseware can be found at www.elt-inc.com.
For additional information, please contact Rebecca Peterson at rpeterson@elt-inc.com or 415-962-3414.