Insights

In Day Pitney's June 2018 Employment and Labor Quarterly Update, we reported on New York state's and New York City's recently enacted legislation imposing new requirements on employers relating to sexual harassment. As we reported then, among other key features of the New York City law, effective September 6, 2018, employers will be required to conspicuously display an anti-sexual harassment rights and responsibilities poster in employee breakrooms or other common places employees gather, and they must distribute an information sheet on sexual harassment to newly hired employees. The New York City Human Rights Commission has now made the required poster and information sheet available on its website. Although the law requires employers to provide posters and information sheets in both English and Spanish, so far only the English versions are available.

Under another feature of the New York City law, effective April 1, 2019, employers with 15 or more employees will be required to conduct annual interactive sexual harassment training for all employees, which must address a number of prescribed topics, including bystander intervention. The New York City Human Rights Commission has not yet posted its model training materials, but it has referred people interested in more information about bystander intervention training here.

Effective October 9, 2018, the New York state law will require employers to provide all employees with annual interactive sexual harassment prevention training that equals or exceeds the minimum standards of a model training program to be drafted by the State's Department of Labor and Division of Human Rights. That model training program is not yet available.

Day Pitney can assist clients with meeting their sexual harassment training requirements and complying with other aspects of these new laws.