FEHA Harassment Training for California Restaurants: What You’re Required to Do

The Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) is California’s primary anti-discrimination and harassment law. It applies to virtually every California employer — including independent restaurants — and it requires mandatory sexual harassment prevention training for employees on a recurring schedule.

FEHA harassment training for California restaurants became a more prominent compliance issue after SB 1343 (2019) expanded the requirement to cover employers with as few as five employees. Before that, only employers with 50 or more employees were covered under the older SB 1825 standard. If you have five or more employees — full-time, part-time, and temporary combined — you are covered.

Here’s everything you need to know about FEHA sexual harassment training requirements for your restaurant in 2026.

Who Is Required to Complete FEHA Training

The FEHA sexual harassment training requirements break down by role:

Role	Training Required	Frequency
Supervisors and managers	2 hours	Every 2 years
Non-supervisory employees	1 hour	Every 2 years
New supervisory hires	2 hours	Within 6 months of starting in role
New non-supervisory hires	1 hour	Within 6 months of hire
Existing employees promoted to supervisor	2 hours	Within 6 months of promotion

A “supervisor” under FEHA is anyone with authority to hire, fire, assign, direct, or discipline other employees. In a restaurant context, that includes your head chef, floor manager, shift lead, and bar manager — even if they don’t have “manager” in their title.

Seasonal and temporary employees count toward your five-employee threshold, and if they stay long enough, they trigger the training requirement too. If a seasonal hire works more than 30 days in a calendar year, they must receive the non-supervisory training within that period.

What the Training Must Cover

FEHA sexual harassment training requirements specify both minimum duration and minimum content. A one-hour online video that doesn’t cover all required topics doesn’t satisfy the requirement even if employees watched the whole thing.

Required content includes:

• The definition of sexual harassment under FEHA and Title VII
• Examples of conduct that constitutes unlawful harassment, discrimination, and retaliation
• The employer’s complaint process and how employees can report concerns
• The supervisor’s obligation to report harassment when they observe or learn of it
• Practical examples of harassment using exercises, role plays, or hypotheticals
• The limited confidentiality of the complaint process
• Resources available to employees who have experienced harassment
• What “abusive conduct” means and how it differs from harassment

Supervisory training must also cover:

• The supervisor’s specific duties and obligations under FEHA
• How to handle a harassment complaint made to the supervisor
• The prevention and correction of abusive conduct in the workplace

Training must be provided by a qualified trainer — an attorney with employment law experience, a human resources professional with relevant expertise, or a trainer approved to provide FEHA-compliant content. Generic online courses that don’t meet all content requirements don’t satisfy the law.

How FEHA Training Interacts With Your Other Compliance Obligations

FEHA harassment training for California restaurants doesn’t exist in isolation. It sits alongside several other requirements that restaurant operators need to track:

Required Workplace Notice

In addition to training, California requires you to post the CRD (formerly DFEH) harassment and discrimination notice in a location visible to all employees. This is a separate obligation from the training — the notice must be current and prominently displayed regardless of whether training is up to date.

Written Harassment Policy

California employers must also distribute a written anti-harassment policy to all employees. The policy must include specific elements: the prohibited conduct, the complaint process, an anti-retaliation statement, and how to contact the CRD. This policy must be distributed at hire and re-distributed whenever it is updated.

Training Records

You must maintain records of FEHA training completion for each employee for a minimum of two years. Records must include:

• Employee name
• Date of training completion
• Training provider and format (in-person, online, etc.)
• Copy of the certificate of completion (if provided by the trainer)

If the CRD investigates a harassment complaint at your restaurant, training records are among the first things they request. “We did it, I just don’t have the records” is not a defensible answer.

Bystander Intervention Training

California also encourages — and in some contexts requires for supervisors — training on bystander intervention: what to do if you witness harassment, even if you’re not directly involved. Many FEHA-compliant training programs include this, but verify that your program covers it specifically.

The Renewal Cycle: Where Restaurants Fall Behind

The two-year renewal cycle is where most independent restaurants fall out of compliance. Initial training is relatively easy to complete when you’re onboarding staff or setting up a new operation. The renewal is where things slip.

A server hired in June 2024 needed their first training within six months — by December 2024. Their renewal is due by December 2026. A shift lead promoted to supervisor in March 2023 needed supervisory training by September 2023. Their renewal is due by September 2025 — which may already have passed.

Without an active tracking system tied to each employee’s training date, these renewals are invisible. They don’t trigger any external notification. The CRD doesn’t send reminders. The expiration just happens.

This is the same dynamic as RBS certifications and CFM certified food manager California renewals: multi-year windows, rolling per-employee schedules, and no external alert when something lapses. The operators who stay current are the ones tracking it actively, not reactively.

What Happens If You’re Not Compliant

FEHA non-compliance creates two types of exposure for restaurant operators.

Regulatory enforcement

The California Civil Rights Department can investigate training compliance as part of any harassment or discrimination complaint. If an employee files a complaint and the CRD finds that required training wasn’t completed, that becomes part of the enforcement record. It doesn’t automatically create liability — but it significantly strengthens a plaintiff’s case and signals a pattern of non-compliance to the agency.

Civil liability

In a harassment lawsuit, a plaintiff’s attorney will ask whether your supervisors completed required training. If the answer is no, or if you can’t produce records proving they did, that gap becomes an exhibit in the case. California juries take it seriously. Training compliance is one of the clearest ways to demonstrate that you took your obligations under FEHA seriously — and its absence is equally clear evidence that you didn’t.

For a restaurant owner, an ABC license suspension for an RBS violation is a bad week. A FEHA harassment lawsuit is a different order of magnitude. The training requirement exists for a reason, and the records requirement exists because the state knows employers who don’t document compliance often didn’t do it.

A Practical FEHA Compliance System for Independent Restaurants

Here’s a simple framework that works without dedicated HR staff:

1. Choose a qualified training provider that explicitly meets California FEHA requirements, provides separate supervisor and non-supervisory tracks, and issues certificates of completion
2. Build training into your onboarding checklist — non-supervisory employees get the 1-hour training within 30 days of hire (give yourself buffer before the 6-month deadline); supervisors get the 2-hour training on the same timeline
3. Log completion immediately — employee name, date, provider, certificate. Store it somewhere you can retrieve it in under 5 minutes if a regulator asks
4. Set renewal reminders at 22 months (2 months before the 2-year deadline) for every employee
5. When someone is promoted to supervisor, trigger the 2-hour supervisory training and set the 6-month countdown
6. Verify your harassment policy is current and redistribute it to all employees annually

This takes less than an hour to set up and keeps you continuously compliant without thinking about it.

How ComplianceKitchen Handles FEHA Training Tracking

ComplianceKitchen tracks FEHA training completion records alongside your other compliance obligations — RBS certifications, food handler cards, and CFM certified food manager California renewals — in one place.

• Per-employee training records — log completion dates, training provider, and role at time of training
• Two-year renewal alerts — automatic reminders before each employee’s renewal window opens
• Supervisor vs. non-supervisory tracking — separate records for the two training tracks, with role changes captured when someone is promoted
• New hire deadline tracking — the 6-month training window is set when you add a new employee
• Audit-ready export — pull your full FEHA training log on demand for any CRD request or legal inquiry

FEHA harassment training for California restaurants isn’t optional, and the two-year renewal cycle doesn’t manage itself. The restaurants that stay compliant are the ones that treat it like any other recurring deadline — tracked, documented, and renewed before it lapses.