What is the July CA Senate Bill 553 Compliance: Workplace Violence Prevention?

Compliance Week’s 2023 ‘Compliance Officer Survey’ indicates that keeping pace with regulatory change is a top concern for compliance professionals. Globally, significant developments are being made in regulating the use of artificial intelligence, improving data privacy and combatting money laundering and financial crime. For California, however, workplace safety is a key focus area.

As of July 1st, 2024, Senate Bill 553 will come into effect, mandating that nearly all employers in the State of California will be required to implement a comprehensive Workplace Violence Prevention Plan. A first-of-its-kind workplace violence prevention law, California employers will also need to train employees on how to identify and avoid workplace violence and maintain a violent incident log for all violent incidents that occur in the workplace.

Defining workplace violence

Within the Bill, workplace violence is defined broadly as “any act of violence or threat of violence that occurs in a place of employment.” The law also defines four specific types of workplace violence including verbal and written threats of violence and incidents involving the use of firearm or dangerous weapon.

What does this mean for our customers?

The requirement for a Workplace Violence Prevention Plan applies to all employers and employees in the State of California, with a few limited exceptions.

Under the new law, employers will need to ensure compliance by July 1st, 2024. They should review the law and its requirements to ensure their practices are in line with SB553 by the effective date.

Furthermore, employers are required to train their employees “when the plan is first established and annually thereafter.” This means that employers are expected to have their Workplace Violence Prevention Plan in place and to have also conducted initial employee training by July 1st.

What should be included in a Workplace Violence Prevention Plan?

Workplace Violence Prevention Plans must be in writing and easily accessible by all employees. The model Workplace Violence Prevention Plan published by Cal/OSHA indicates the necessary information within an employer’s plan to be compliant with SB553.

This includes:

• Workplace violence definitions
• The individuals responsible for enacting the plan
• Guidelines on employee communications
• Emergency response procedures
• Procedures for post-incident response

How can Learning Pool help?

Learning Pool is developing an off-the-shelf Adaptive Compliance offering related to the SB553 training requirements that will be released in early April 2024. It will be available both as:

• A module, which could be included with other modules as part of a larger annual Modular Code course.
• A short, stand-alone offering, with all the same content, but its own subject matter-specific introduction, video, and conclusion.

Customers will be able to add a copy of their Workplace Violence Prevention Plan and specific contact/reporting information to the course. However, given the nature of the training requirements, some of them may need to be addressed by employers via customization and/or practices outside of an online e-learning course.

Why is Learning Pool’s Adaptive Content for Compliance offering the smart choice?

Learning Pool’s Adaptive Content for Compliance is built on an adaptive framework that captures data on each learner’s interactions with the course and adapts the experience to reflect their needs in real-time.

We can help you transform your compliance journey with:

• True adaptability: Learning experiences adapt to individual learner needs throughout the training, saving seat time along the way for employees answering questions correctly.

• Behavioral analytics and measurement: An advanced data engine that helps you to understand every learner throughout the entire learning journey and confidently measure learning outcomes.

• Targeted remediation: Proactively alert managers to likely issues and struggling learners. Through smarter data and a personalized training path, we create a long-tail learning journey specific to each learner.

To learn more about SB553, what it means for your organization and how Learning Pool can help, get in touch to speak with a compliance expert.