Earlier this year both the State of New York (NYS) and New York City (NYC) enacted new sexual harassment prevention laws that among other things require covered employers to provide annual sexual harassment training to their employees. The state law went into effect on October 9, 2018, and the city law goes into effect on April 1, 2019. Covered employers have one year from those effective dates to provide the required training.
Although the two training requirements are similar in many respects, both requiring that the training be interactive, that it include an explanation of sexual harassment and include examples of conduct that would constitute unlawful sexual harassment, as well as information addressing conduct by supervisors, there are some notable differences, such as the requirement under the NYC law that each employee sign an acknowledgment that they received the annual training.
Because many employers operate in both of these jurisdictions, and thus are now under an obligation to provide annual sexual harassment training, we thought it might be helpful to provide a comparison of the two laws’ training requirements, noting in particular those areas where they may differ.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.