Question: I heard that the California Civil Rights Department published a Harassment Prevention Guide this year. Does this Guide change what I should be doing as an employer?
Answer: No, but you should use the guide to ensure your practices are legally compliant. The Guide does not create new laws, but it is a practical roadmap from the agency that enforces California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act. FEHA prohibits discrimination, harassment and retaliation, and it requires employers to take “reasonable steps” to prevent and correct unlawful conduct. The CRD published its 2025 Harassment Prevention Guide in March 2025. Written in a practical question-and-answer format, the Guide explains how the CRD interprets an employer’s obligation to take “reasonable steps” to prevent and correct harassment. It also highlights common, real-world pitfalls where employers often make mistakes.
The Guide points to three areas employers should prioritize: (1) policy and leadership; (2) reporting and investigations, and (3) remedial action and anti-retaliation. Below is a summary of the Guide’s discussion of these three areas.
Policy and leadership: The Guide highlights that employers must have a written anti-harassment policy. At a minimum, the policy should clearly explain how complaints are received, how they are investigated, and how the company will act promptly and fairly to correct misconduct.
The Guide emphasizes “buy-in from the top.” This means that leadership should model appropriate behavior and consistently reinforce expectations. Also, training is essential. California law requires two hours of sexual harassment prevention training every two years for supervisors and one hour every two years for non-supervisory employees.
Reporting and investigations: The Guide encourages employers to prioritize reports of unlawful or inappropriate conduct. The first step is to determine whether the reported conduct violates company policy (or the law) and is serious enough to merit a formal investigation. If so, the employer should investigate to determine what happened. During the investigative process, the employer should be even-handed, timely and thorough.
Investigators should make findings based on the “preponderance of the evidence” standard. This standard is also referred to as the “more likely than not” standard. In other words, the investigator makes a finding of whether it is more likely than not that the alleged conduct did or did not occur.
The Guide also addresses common investigation issues. These issues include confidentiality limits, how quickly to start and finish, and recommended practices such as impartial investigators, trained interviewers, credibility assessments when facts conflict and documenting steps taken and findings made.
Remote work is not an exception. The Guide stresses that policies and reporting procedures should clearly cover remote and virtual conduct, including how employees report behavior that crosses the line.
Remedial action and anti-retaliation: The Guide encourages employers to address misconduct even when it does not rise to a legal violation, because early intervention can prevent escalation. Remedial measures should fit the severity and should be consistent with how the company handled similar situations in the past.
The Guide also emphasizes investigating anonymous complaints (anonymity is not a reason to ignore a report) and actively preventing retaliation. Retaliation may appear as a termination, demotion, negative reviews, workload changes, reassignment or ostracizing an employee.
Employers are advised to review the entire Guide for further details. The Guide can be downloaded at https://calcivilrights.ca.gov/posters/.
Marco Lucido is a lawyer with Fenton & Keller in Monterey. This column is intended to answer questions of general interest and should not be construed as legal advice. Email queries to mlucido@fentonkeller.com
