California Offers Free Harassment Prevention Training. Here's What Employers Still Need to Manage

California already gives employers a free way to deliver required harassment prevention training.

The California Civil Rights Department provides separate online courses for supervisory and nonsupervisory employees, and CRD says those courses satisfy the state's training requirements. CRD's current employer FAQ confirms this, and California Government Code §12950.1 expressly allows employers to direct employees to the state's online training.

That solves an important problem: you do not necessarily need to buy the training content.

It does not solve the entire compliance workflow. The employer still needs to determine who should be trained, distinguish supervisors from nonsupervisors, track employee-specific deadlines, provide the training as part of employment, follow up on incomplete assignments, and keep the required training documentation.

The state provides the training. It does not manage your training program.

California's free courses can satisfy the training requirement

Government Code §12950.1 requires the Civil Rights Department to make two online courses available: a one-hour course for nonsupervisory employees and a two-hour course for supervisory employees.

The statute goes further. It says an employer may direct employees to the CRD course and, by doing so, satisfy the employer's training obligation under the section. See Government Code §12950.1(i)-(k).

CRD's current guidance says the same thing plainly: its online trainings satisfy the requirements of Government Code §12950.1. CRD's employer FAQ links employers directly to the courses.

The courses are currently available in:

• English
• Spanish
• Korean
• Chinese
• Vietnamese
• Tagalog

Employers can access them from CRD's Sexual Harassment Prevention Training page. A small employer can use California's own training rather than purchasing a commercial training library solely to obtain compliant course content. But free content does not mean zero administration.

The employer still has to determine who needs training

CRD does not decide which people at your company should receive which course. That remains an employer-side task.

Under Government Code §12950.1, covered California nonsupervisory employees generally need at least one hour of training, while covered supervisory employees generally need at least two hours. The statute sets the minimum durations.

Before sending anyone a training link, an employer needs to know:

• whether the company is covered by the five-person threshold
• which employees are California-based
• which employees are supervisors
• which employees are nonsupervisors
• whether any special timing rule applies

This is an administrative classification problem before it is a course-delivery problem. Sending every employee the same CRD course could be wrong because supervisors and nonsupervisors have different minimum training requirements.

For the broader coverage rules, see California Harassment Prevention Training Requirements: A Guide for Employers.

The employer still has to track deadlines

California's training rule is not just "take this course once." Covered employees generally must be retrained every two years. New nonsupervisory employees generally must receive training within six months of hire, while new supervisors generally must receive training within six months of assuming a supervisory position. Government Code §12950.1(a) establishes those timing rules.

Certain employees hired to work for less than six months can have a faster deadline: generally within 30 calendar days after hire or within 100 hours worked, whichever occurs first. Government Code §12950.1(f) sets out that rule.

CRD's October 2025 guidance also notes that employers may not use the general biennial deadline to extend the training deadline for new employees. See CRD's employer FAQ.

A useful system needs to answer:

• When was this employee hired?
• When did this employee become a supervisor?
• When did this employee last complete qualifying training?
• When is this employee due next?
• Is this employee already overdue?

A free course does not create a due-date system.

For the timing rules in detail, see When Is California Harassment Prevention Training Due?.

The employer still has to provide the training as part of employment

California does not shift the training burden onto the employee just because the state makes the course available online.

CRD's employer FAQ says the employer is responsible for providing the required training, including any costs that may be incurred, and that employees may not be required to take the training on their personal time. CRD explains the employer's responsibility here.

An employer should not simply email the state's training link, ask employees to complete it sometime on their own, and assume the administrative obligation has disappeared. The employer still needs a process for assigning the training as part of employment and ensuring employees have an opportunity to complete it.

The course may be free. The employee's work time is not.

The employer still has to follow up on completion

Government Code §12950.1 requires employers to provide the training. CRD's free course gives employees a way to complete it. What CRD does not do is run the employer's completion workflow.

CRD says it does not store or track certificates or completion of its trainings. If an employee loses a certificate after closing the training session, CRD says the employee may need to retake the training to obtain another one. CRD's employer FAQ addresses this directly.

If employees receive the link, the employer still needs to know:

• who started
• who completed
• who has not completed
• who needs a reminder
• whether completion evidence was collected
• whether the evidence is still available later

CRD delivers the course. It does not maintain your completion ledger.

The employer still has to retain training documentation

California requires employers to keep documentation of the training they provide for a minimum of two years.

CRD's current employer FAQ says the records should include, among other things:

• names of employees trained
• date of training
• sign-in sheet, if used
• certificates of attendance or completion, if issued
• type of training
• written or recorded materials comprising the training
• name of the training provider

CRD summarizes the documentation requirement in its employer FAQ. CRD also warns that it does not store or track certificates or employee completion of its online training.

If an employee finishes the training and downloads a completion certificate, somebody still needs to make sure that evidence reaches the employer and is retained appropriately.

For more detail, see California Harassment Prevention Training Recordkeeping Requirements.

The employer still has to handle training-related questions

Government Code §12950.1 says questions resulting from CRD's online training should be directed to the employer's human resources department or an equally qualified professional, rather than to CRD. See Government Code §12950.1(k).

CRD repeats that point in its employer FAQ. The free course is therefore not a fully outsourced training service: California supplies the online content, while the employer remains part of the process.

Employers are not required to use CRD's course

The state course is an option, not the only permissible route. CRD says employers may choose other ways to satisfy the training requirement. Government Code §12950.1 likewise allows employers to develop their own compliant training module. See §12950.1(i).

An employer generally has two broad choices:

1. Use California's free training content, then manage the administrative workflow around it.
2. Use another compliant training solution, which may bundle content and administration together.

Neither approach is universally better. If the state's course already solves the content problem, a small employer may decide that the remaining pain is assignment, tracking, reminders, and records. That is a different software problem.

Free training does not mean harassment prevention begins and ends with the course

California's required training is a minimum requirement. Government Code §12950.1 says compliance with the training requirement does not insulate an employer from liability for sexual harassment, and should not discourage longer, more frequent, or more elaborate training where appropriate. See Government Code §12950.1(c) and (e).

California also separately requires employers to maintain harassment-prevention policies and provide employees with required harassment information. CRD's 2025 Harassment Prevention Guide for Employers explains those broader responsibilities.

The free state course is one piece of a broader employer process. It is not a substitute for:

• a compliant harassment-prevention policy
• appropriate complaint procedures
• appropriate handling of complaints
• broader workplace obligations
• fact-specific legal advice when needed

What the free training workflow actually looks like

Step 1: Identify who needs training

Determine which California employees need training and whether each person is supervisory or nonsupervisory.

Step 2: Determine each employee's deadline

Track hire dates, supervisor-assumption dates, prior qualifying training, and the recurring two-year requirement.

Step 3: Assign the correct CRD course

Send nonsupervisors to the nonsupervisory course and supervisors to the supervisory course.

Step 4: Provide time to complete it

The employer is responsible for providing the required training as part of employment.

Step 5: Follow up before the deadline

The state does not chase employees on your behalf.

Step 6: Collect completion evidence

CRD does not maintain your company's certificate archive.

Step 7: Retain the records

Keep the required training documentation for at least two years.

Step 8: Schedule the next requirement

Training is recurring. A completed assignment today creates a future tracking date.

The course is one step in that workflow. The workflow is the compliance-management problem.

When is the free state course enough?

For some very small employers, a manual process may be completely reasonable. A spreadsheet plus calendar reminders might be enough if the company reliably tracks employee status, due dates, assignments, completion, certificates, and future retraining dates.

The downside is that the company itself becomes the system. Every reminder, status update, certificate, and future deadline depends on somebody maintaining the spreadsheet correctly. That tradeoff changes as the company grows or employee status changes more often.

There is no legal rule requiring an employer to purchase dedicated software. The question is whether the manual process remains reliable enough for the company operating it.

Practical checklist

1. Confirm that the employer may be covered.
2. Identify the California employees who need training.
3. Separate supervisors from nonsupervisors.
4. Record each employee's applicable deadline.
5. Give each employee the correct CRD training link.
6. Provide the training as part of employment.
7. Track completion yourself.
8. Collect the completion evidence promptly.
9. Retain the required documentation for at least two years.
10. Set the next training date.
11. Keep training separate from the broader harassment-prevention program.

How Beamly can help

Beamly is built for the part California's free course does not handle.

Employers can use CRD's training content while Beamly helps organize employee training assignments, track employee-specific progress and due dates, manage reminders, retain completion evidence and compliance records, review training status from an administrative workflow, and maintain audit-oriented records of training activity.

That means the employer does not need to buy a new training library just to get an administrative system around California's course.

California can provide the training. Beamly can help organize what happens around it.

Beamly does not provide legal advice, determine whether an employer is legally compliant, guarantee compliance, or replace legal counsel.