California employers should begin preparing to comply with their annual requirements under the workplace violence prevention law, California's Labor Code 6401.9 (commonly known as SB 553), including retraining their staff and reviewing their workplace violence prevention plans.
The law has several annual requirements for employers, including:
- Reviewing their plan at least annually, including for its effectiveness and employee involvement in the plan.
- Providing effective training at least annually on all the law's requirements, including the plan itself (which would mean any changes an employer made during the annual review), how to report workplace violence incidents and workplace violence hazards.
SB 553 went into effect on July 1, 2024, including the training requirement. Because California employers had to scramble to create a workplace violence prevention plan and train their employees on it, many employers created their plan and completed their training before SB 553's July 1, 2024, effective date. That means the annual deadline to review the plan and retrain employees is likely right around the corner.
Don't be fooled by the law's provision on "additional training" — this is only training for any "new or previously unrecognized hazard." All the workplace violence prevention training that employers gave last year must be repeated.
Cal/OSHA is considering a draft regulation on how to implement the law, which it must propose by Dec. 31, 2025. The next few months will tell how far Cal/OSHA intends to go with adopting stringent regulatory requirements, many of which were purposefully left out of the text of the law.
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