Hot take: The new CA harassment training rules made things worse, not better

I took the old 2 hour anti-harassment course back in 2021 and it was boring but straightforward. Now with SB 1340, my boss made us do the new interactive training in a group setting last month and it turned into a total mess. People were scared to even laugh at a joke during breaks because someone might report it. I get the goal, but adding roleplay scenarios just made everyone paranoid instead of actually teaching anything useful. Has anyone else noticed their workplace atmosphere got way more tense after these new rules kicked in?

3 comments

3 Comments

abbyg6010d ago

The real issue nobody talks about is these interactive trainings actually give HR a paper trail to fire people they already didn't like. It turned a basic awareness class into a weapon, not a tool. Now every awkward joke or misunderstood comment gets documented in writing instead of handled like adults.

jake63810d ago

Honestly I used to roll my eyes at people who said this stuff until I saw it happen to a guy named Marcus at my old warehouse job. He made one dumb joke about the break room coffee and six months later HR brought up that exact comment from a training quiz as part of his termination file. It was NOT about the joke, the supervisor just hated him from day one. So yeah, you're right that these trainings give them a weapon if they want one, even if the training itself is harmless.

jordan90310d ago

Flip it around and look at it from the other side. Before these new rules, a manager could just tell a joke that made people uncomfortable and there was zero record of it unless somebody spoke up and risked getting labeled a troublemaker. Now every single person in that room has equal footing because the training document shows who laughed and who didn't. I saw a guy at my last job get fired for repeatedly making sexual comments during a safety meeting, and the only reason HR finally acted was because the interactive training logs from three months earlier showed the exact same pattern of behavior. Without that paper trail, he would have kept doing it and blamed the women for being too sensitive.