Updating your sexual harassment policy to include “abusive conduct”

What is Abusive Conduct? Assembly Bill 2053 and the legislation defines “abusive conduct” as “conduct of an employer or employee in the workplace, with malice, that a reasonable person would find hostile, offensive, and unrelated to an employer’s legitimate business interests.”

Different types of abusive conduct. Abusive conduct may include repeated infliction of verbal abuse, such as the use of derogatory remarks, insults, and epithets, verbal or physical conduct that a reasonable person would find threatening, intimidating, or humiliating, or the gratuitous sabotage or undermining of a person’s work performance. A single act shall not constitute abusive conduct, unless especially severe and egregious.

Harassment training is in the best interest of your company. Make sure you add “Abusive Conduct” to your existing Sexual Harassment Policy. An HR best practice is to train all of your employees, regardless of your Company size, and regardless if these employees are exempt or not (managers or non-managers). Nevertheless, the law only requires employers with 50 employees or more to conduct this mandatory training, once every two (2) years; it also requires all new managers to be trained within the first six months of employment. Training should last two (2) hours in duration. The best “adult training” should be interactive with lots of time for Q&A’s and true examples of harassment in the workplace.

Call us at (818) 845-5584 to discuss how you can set up harassment training for your company.