• Overview of Connecticut Sexual Harassment Training Requirements
  
  The Connecticut Human Rights and Opportunities Act requires all private and public employers with fifty or more employees to provide two hours of sexual harassment training to all supervisory employees within six months of the assumption of a supervisory position. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 46a-54(15)(B).
  

• Content of Global Compliance's Preventing Workplace Harassment-Connecticut Supervisors' 2nd Edition
  
  Global Compliance's award-winning online course, Preventing Workplace Harassment, provides employees the information they need to prevent and report sexual harassment and other forms of workplace harassment, regardless of the state in which employees work. Information is provided to employees not only on federal law but also on the legally protected characteristics in each state and in many localities. To learn more about the content of this course, click here.
  
  Like supervisors in all states, supervisors who supervise employees in Connecticut take the same sections found in Global Compliance's online course, Preventing Workplace Harassment. In addition, those supervisors receive additional instruction. The additional instruction is designed to meet the specific instructional requirements of Connecticut law. Specifically, Conn. Agencies Regs. § 46a-54-204 says that the training must:
  
  
  1. Describe the federal and state statutory provisions prohibiting sexual harassment in the work place with which the employer is required to comply, including, but not limited to, the Connecticut discriminatory employment practices statute (section 46a-60 of the Connecticut General Statutes) and "Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended (42 U.S.C. section 2000e, and following sections);
     
  2. Define sexual harassment as explicitly set forth in subdivision (8) of subsection (a) of section 46a-60 of the Connecticut General Statutes and as distinguished from other forms of illegal harassment prohibited by subsection (a) of section 46a-60 of the Connecticut General Statutes and section 3 of Public Act 91-58;
     
  3. Discuss the types of conduct that may constitute sexual harassment under the law, including the fact that the harasser or the victim of harassment may be either a man or a woman and that harassment can occur involving persons of the same or opposite sex;
     
  4. Describe the remedies available in sexual harassment cases, including, but not limited to, cease and desist orders; hiring, promotion or reinstatement; compensatory damages and back pay;
     
  5. Advise employees that individuals who commit acts of sexual harassment may be subject to both civil and criminal penalties; and
     
  6. Discuss strategies to prevent sexual harassment in the work place.
     
  
  
Instead of repeating the same concepts and principles to meet the two-hour requirement, Global Compliance's Preventing Workplace Harassment: Connecticut Supervisors' 2nd Edition explores additional gray areas and complicated scenarios. For example, the course includes a simulation section that allows the supervisor to apply what he or she learns to the nuances of a difficult conversation with an employee who may be being harassed by a co-worker.

In the simulation section, you play the role of a supervisor who happens to see an employee, Ted, massaging the shoulders of another employee, Lucy. You decide to talk to Lucy to find out whether or not she was bothered by Ted's behavior. Your conversation with Lucy is the subject of this simulation.

You choose which questions to ask Lucy. Depending on the questions you ask, you obtain a different response. Can you gather all of the information you need to determine if Lucy is being harassed? Can you gather the information in a manner that does not alienate Lucy? After you conclude your conversation with Lucy, you get to see whether you obtained all of the relevant information that you needed to gather. You are allowed to review each question you asked and are given feedback on whether the appropriateness of the question.

• Will Global Compliance's online course help us ensure that we train all current supervisors and all new supervisors within six months of hire?
  
  Connecticut law imposes an ongoing obligation for employers to train new supervisory personnel within six months of their assumption of a supervisory position. If the employer chooses to provide this training in-person in a classroom setting, it must ensure that it provides a class at least once every six months, and that all persons who have obtained a supervisory position in the previous six months attend that class.
  
  With Global Compliance's online course, current supervisors can take the course at their convenience and new employees can be trained as soon as they are hired or promoted to a supervisory position. Global Compliance's tracking system makes it almost effortless for employers to document that each supervisor received the training in the time specified by the law.
  

• Does the Connecticut law require refresher courses for supervisors?
  
  Unlike California Law AB 1825, Connecticut law does not require employers to provide supervisory employees sexual harassment training beyond that which must be provided in the first six months of obtaining a supervisory position. However, the regulations implementing the law specifically state, "While not required by these regulations, the Commission encourages an employer having fifty (50) or more employees to provide an upgrade of legal interpretations and related developments concerning sexual harassment to supervisory personnel once every three (3) years."
  Conn Agencies Regs. § 46a-54-204.
  
  Moreover, given federal court decisions and EEOC's guidelines that have indicated that training on sexual harassment and other forms of workplace harassment must be provided "periodically," prudent employers should strongly consider providing harassment prevention training every year.
  
  Global Compliance offers refreshers courses for both supervisory and non-supervisory employees each year. The refresher courses remind employees of the major principles that they learned from previous Global Compliance courses on harassment prevention, address current topics relating to workplace harassment, and reinforce the employer's commitment to a harassment-free workplace.
  

• Does the law require that online courses allow employees to submit questions?
  
  Because of concerns about whether online courses could provide for interactive training, the State of Connecticut's Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities originally ruled that online courses would not suffice. However, on May 19, 2003, the Commission issued a letter opinion stating that an online sexual harassment course would comply with the law if the course "provides an opportunity for students to ask questions and obtain answers in a reasonably prompt manner."
  
  Global Compliance's online courses allow for users to submit questions, even anonymously, and receive answers to those questions online.
  

• Which employers are covered by this law?
  
  All employers who have fifty or more employees must provide sexual harassment training to supervisors. According to the regulations interpreting the law, "Employer Having Fifty or More Employees" means "the state and all political subdivisions thereof, including the General Assembly, and means any person or employer who has a total of fifty or more persons, including supervisory and managerial employees and partners, in his employ for a minimum of thirteen weeks during the training year."
  
  The Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities ("CHRO") has informed Global Compliance that any employer who employs 50 or more persons is required to provide sexual harassment training to all supervisors who work in Connecticut. According to the Connecticut CHRO, this is true even if the employer employs fewer than 50 people in Connecticut.
  

• Which employees are considered "supervisors" that must be trained?
  
  According to the regulations interpreting the law, "Supervisory Employee" means "any individual who has the authority, by using her or his independent judgment, in the interest of the employer, to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward or discipline other employees, or responsibility to direct them, or to adjust their grievances or effectively to recommend such actions." As a result, employers should provide supervisory training as required by this law to any employee who has responsibility for any of the above personnel actions, even if the employee does not have an official supervisory title.
  

• Should employers also provide training on other forms of unlawful workplace harassment?
  
  While the Connecticut law requires employers to provide two hours of sexual harassment training to supervisors, the laws also makes clear that this training requirement is intended to represent a minimum threshold.
  
  Harassment and discrimination based on sex is just one of the many types of discrimination protected by state and federal law. After the Supreme Court's landmark decisions in the 1998 Faragher and Ellerth cases, federal court decisions and EEOC Guidelines have made clear that employers must ensure that harassment prevention training covers not just sexual harassment but all types of unlawful harassment and retaliation.
  
  Indeed, simply training on sexual harassment will not protect you from other types of harassment or retaliation claims. For example, in Reed v. Cracker Barrel Old Country Store,1 the jury found that the plaintiff had proved her case of sexual harassment but that the employer was not liable for the harassment because it had made reasonable efforts to prevent harassment, including providing harassment prevention training. The jury, however, found that the employer had retaliated against the plaintiff and awarded punitive damages for the retaliation. The employer argued that its training and other efforts to prevent sexual harassment should also protect it from punitive damages against retaliation. The court disagreed. According to the court,
  
  
  Title VII clearly prohibits more than sexual harassment.... [and] punitive damages are also available under Title VII for more than just sexual harassment....[An employer's] good-faith compliance must relate to the specific claim being raised under Title VII. (emphasis added).
  
  
  While sexual harassment lawsuits tend to grab the headlines, employers' risk of harassment lawsuits based on other protected characteristics is actually greater. Of the 109,472 harassment charges that were filed with the EEOC during the 1990s, 33% were sex-based, 14% were national-origin-based, and 43% were race-based. Employers can expect harassment charges based on age to increase as the "baby boomers" age. In addition, since September 11, 2001, the number of religious and national origin harassment and discrimination claims filed with the EEOC has increased dramatically. The EEOC reports that between October 1, 2001 and September 30, 2002, allegations of religious bias were up 21%, age bias were up 14.5%, and national origin bias were up 13% over the previous year.
  
  Thus, not only must Connecticut employers provide supervisors two hours of sexual harassment training, but they also must periodically provide additional training on other forms of workplace harassment and discrimination to all employees.
  

• Should employers also provide workplace harassment training to non-supervisory employees?
  
  While the Connecticut law only directly spells out employers' responsibilities to provide sexual harassment training to supervisors in Connecticut, employers still have a responsibility under state and federal law to provide workplace harassment prevention training periodically to non-supervisory employees as well.
  
  Under federal law, EEOC guidelines indicate that employers periodically "should provide training to all employees to ensure they understand their rights and responsibilities" relating to workplace harassment.2 Employers who fail to provide harassment prevention training to all employees may be unable to raise an affirmative defense to a harassment lawsuit.3
  
  Thus, employers should continue to provide periodic workplace harassment prevention training to all employees-not just supervisors. The training provided to non-supervisors, however, may be shorter than two hours and does not have to specifically address each of the topics listed in the Connecticut law.
  
  Global Compliance's Preventing Workplace Harassment course addresses all of the topics relevant to non-supervisory employees.

To Learn More

To view a course demo, click here.

To learn more about the Preventing Workplace Harassment-Connecticut Supervisors' 2nd Edition, call us at (800) 331-7965 or contact us.

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1. 171 F. Supp. 2d 741 (M.D. Tenn. 2001)
   
2. EEOC, Enforcement Guidance: Vicarious Liability for Unlawful Harassment by Supervisors, No. 915.002, June 18, 1999 (emphasis added)
   
3. See, Yaccarino v. U.S. Postmaster General. EEOC 170-AO-8812X (Sep. 6, 2001) (holding that the Post Office had failed to establish an affirmative defense because it could show no evidence "that training was provided by the agency to supervisors and employees to prevent harassment.")