Episode 105: New Role for HR: Mandatory Reporter

Welcome to the Workplace, a podcast by Cal Chamber. I'm Erica Frank, Cal Chambers Executive Vice President and General Counsel. And back with me on the podcast today are Cal Chambers, employment law experts, training gurus Matthew Roberts and Bianca Saad. Welcome Matt and Bianca.

Thank you. Thank you for having us, Erica.

So the last podcast that we did we ended with kind of giving a teaser to our audience about a bill that hasn't received too much of attention, but it certainly raised a number of eyebrows during our Employment Law Update seminar which we just concluded. And that has to do with AB 1963, which is the mandatory reporting bill. And we talked just a tad bit about it when we last did our Employment Law Update podcast. Like I just mentioned, just kind of by way of background, we just passed a preview. Pretty big deadline for California employers. And that was the deadline for those employers with five or more employees to provide all of their employees with compliant harassment, discrimination and retaliation prevention training. And many of our listeners members, California employers did utilize Cal Chambers harassment prevention training, which was a very useful tool that you could use because you could meet the compliance requirement by training through the computer, which is absolutely helpful, especially when many of us are still in remote work situations due to the COVID 19 pandemic. Now some of our listeners might be having a little bit of a panic attack thinking oh my gosh, I totally forgot or holy cow, I didn't know. I mean, is there a little bit of a relief for them? Can they make up the difference? Can they still take the course? Yeah.

So really, you know, the issue here with this, with not meeting the deadline is that the Department of Fair Employment and Housing will come to you and tell you do the training Right. So as always with these compliance issues, better late than never is always an important mantra to keep with this. But it is important to do it as quickly as you can because the longer that that sets outstanding. There's also other complicated issues with regards to whether any potential claims may arise and that being used as evidence against you for these discrimination claims that might pop up. So get that training in now even though you're late. So that way we can meet the compliance both with the DFEH and put our best foot forward in maintaining a discrimination and harassment free environment.

Yes, it's all about that good faith effort to comply with many of the laws that California employers must comply with. And just a couple of additional things to remember cause we really wanna get to the mandatory reporter. But just remember, with this harassment prevention mandate, the mandate also include training within six months of hire or Promotion your employees. So it is something that once you hire someone or you promote them, they do need to receive this training within six months of the hire and promotion. And Bianca, do you want to just speak to a new component of the mandate that took effect this year regarding seasonal or temporary employees?

Yes. So effective January 1, 2021, employers do need to worry about, you know, make sure that they are training their temporary and seasonal employees. So the timeframe for that is you need to provide the training within 30 calendar days after the hire date or within 100 hours worked, whichever occurs first. Okay. Now, if you have employees that are employed for fewer than 30 calendar days or work fewer than 100 hours, then you're not going to be required to train. But otherwise, you want to make sure that you're meeting those training obligations. And then just another note, for those of you that use staffing agencies for staffing agency employees, the training is to be provided by the temp agency, not the contracting employer. However, because of joint employment considerations and issues that might pop up, you certainly it's a good idea to make sure that the staffing agency that you're using is aware of that and is compliant.

Excellent. Good point. Thank you for reminding employers about the joint employer status. So let's get to the topic of today's podcast. And that has to do with mandatory reporters in A.B. 1963. Who wants to kick off the discussion?

I'll be happy to do so, erica.

Awesome.

So AB 1963, a new law that we covered in our employment law updates, of course, but one, as we've mentioned in the past, that flew under the radar with everything else that was going on with COVID and other important big laws such as the CFRA expansion. But this one is fascinating because there's a lot of coverage that may take place here with this law. So any employer with five or more employees who have minors working for you, whether on a pay basis or on a voluntary basis, are covered under AB 1963. Now, we've all heard about mandatory reporters in passing with regards to child abuse and these kind of sticky issues. And so what AB 1963 does is it creates a couple new categories of mandated reporters that must report any kind of child abuse issues that they see when they see them. And those two categories of employees are HR professionals who work for businesses who again employ or have minors working with them in their workplace, and then any frontline supervisors who directly supervise the work being performed by the minors. These are two new categories of mandated reporters. And so to assist with this new mandated reporter status for these types of employees. There's also a training component to this bill that I'm sure Bianca could could discuss with us as well. Bianca?

Yeah. So the training requirement, you know, there are specific requirements as far as they need to cover identification and reporting of child abuse and neglect. Now, one way that you can meet this training requirement is through the there is a general online training for mandated reporters that is offered by the Office of Child Abuse Prevention and that's through the state Department of Social Services. So for those of you who are falling under this training requirement, you can definitely go to their website and check out the training. You want to make sure that your, you know, again, both the HR professionals and the direct frontline supervisors are trained. The training, excuse me, the reporting requirements for the HR professionals is more expansive than the direct supervisor. So the supervisors are their reporting obligations are limited to instances of sexual abuse, while HR professionals are more inclusive. But the bottom line is they're both going to be subject to that training requirement.

So this is really important for again, just to reiterate, those employers that may have minors working in the workplace, it's separate from work permit requirements. It's separate from the mandatory harassment prevention training that we talked about at the beginning of the podcast. Thank you both for offering such a thorough description of this new bill and one that I think will definitely apply to many employers out there. So thank you again and thank you all for joining us on the workplace. Please comment, share and subscribe to Cal Chambers podcast by visiting calchamber.com.