What are the penalties for late IL sexual harassment training?

penalties IL sexual harassment training

What are the penalties for not providing IL sexual harassment training?
Training late (or not at all) can cost you. 

Illinois SB75, the law that requires all Illinois employers to provide sexual harassment prevention training to every employee every year, allows for penalties for noncompliance.  But how will the State know if a company doesn’t complete the required annual training by the year-end 2020 deadline?  And how costly can the penalties really be? 

Companies that do not provide the required Illinois annual sexual harassment prevention training, retain the correct documentation that the training occurred, and pay employees for the time spent to complete their training are facing some painful potential outcomes.  Here are the worst penalties from our assessment:

Your employees can report you. 

Because an employer’s failure to provide annual sexual harassment prevention training is considered a violation of the Illinois Human Rights Act (IHRA), the Illinois Department of Human Rights (IDHR) takes it very seriously. The IDHR includes a reporting option on their “FAQs” page. Employees can anonymously report their employer’s failure to provide a training by calling the IDHR’s compliance line at (312) 814-6278 or by completing an online inquiry form at www.illinois.gov/dhr/training.

Because Illinois employees can anonymously report their employers for not providing required sexual harassment prevention training on time (or at all), it’s as if the State of Illinois has 6+ million uncompensated auditors working across all shifts.  And since employees remember whether or not they completed sexual harassment prevention training, reporting is easy to do.

The effective result: 

Training employees on sexual harassment prevention early in the calendar year makes sense and can avoid problems later on.

Penalties for not training – small companies:

Companies with three or fewer employees face cash fines of:

• up to $ 500 for a first offense;

• up to $1,000 for a second offense; and

• up to $3,000 for three or more offenses.

This is entirely unnecessary, as a company could train nearly 40 employees with a low-cost online provider of sexual harassment prevention training such as Illinois Required Training Solutions for less than the fine of a first offense. 

Penalties for not training – larger companies:

For employers of four or more workers, the maximum penalties are higher:

• up to $1,000 for a first offense;

• up to $3,000 for a second offense; and

• up to $5,000 for three or more offenses.

What is not yet clear as regards the penalties listed above is the exact definition of an “offense”.  Is it one company-year?  One payroll period?  Or one employee-day?  Depending on the agency’s interpretation of an offense, fines could stack up quickly.

The take-away: 

On-time online sexual harassment prevention training is cheaper than skipping the training.

Civil Penalties involve Public Actions, and Publicity

The Illinois Department of Human Rights’ own guidance on minimum training standards for employers states explicitly that:

Let’s look a bit more deeply at that statement.  In our current internet era, petitions and orders in the public sphere create documents and records with long lives of search and recall.  This can create a publicity headache for a company that relies on a good name and trustworthiness to earn and retain customers.  So even if the economic cost of a cash fine (above) is not enough to encourage employers to complete required training, the publicity ramifications of being found in violation of state law can be an additional deterrant. 

Reality: 

Customers buy from companies they trust.  Protect your company reputation and stay out of the public eye as a violator of the Illinois Human Rights Law. 

If the company is sued for harassment, all bets are off.

Mitigating damages for sexual harassment in the workplace liability becomes that much more difficult when an employer hasn’t trained their workforce in prevention.  It’s very difficult to make a compelling argument that management has taken reasonable steps to detect and prevent misconduct when employees haven’t received guidance on what unacceptable behavior is and how to report and prevent it. 

In the unhappy eventuality that a claim of sexual harassment or sexual assault ends up in front of a state or federal agency or in civil or criminal court, the workplace record of a comprehensive program of ongoing sexual harassment prevention training can be an important defense.  Save those completion certificates and make a note of the certificate validator offered by Illinois Required Training Solutions, because should they become needed, you’ll be very glad you took the time to train.

The Bottom Line:

The cost/benefit analysis is clear. Providing IL sexual harassment prevention training online and early in the calendar year through Illinois Required Training Solutions is inexpensive, quick, and easy. With compliance made simple, avoiding unnecessary penalty costs and headaches is as little as fifteen minutes away.

We’re here to help

Illinois Required Training Solutions offers a fast, simple online training solution to Illinois’ new sexual harassment prevention training mandate that requires EVERY Illinois employee to take sexual harassment prevention training EVERY year.

www.illinoisreq.com features fully compliant online courses that are self-paced, bookmarked, and can be taken from a host of mobile devices anywhere the internet is available. Course students can stop/start as many times as necessary without losing their place or progress, and retest until they pass. Upon finishing the course, students can immediately download and print/email a certificate of completion.

At Illinois Required Training Solutions, we know the importance of getting your folks compliant with minimal disruption to the business. We offer full purchaser and student customer support by telephone, email, and platform private messaging seven days a week with response times averaging less than four hours. Choose Illinois Required Training Solutions to get compliant with Illinois’ sexual harassment prevention training requirements today.