Abusive conduct training is needed by supervisors and employees at California employers with five or more employees. California includes abusive conduct prevention within its required harassment training. The 5-minute video, available in English and Spanish, can serve as the abusive conduct segment of a longer harassment program.

California Government Code §12950.1, as amended by AB 2053, requires employers to include abusive conduct prevention in mandatory harassment training. Covered employers must train supervisors for two hours and nonsupervisory employees for one hour every two years. Abusive conduct is one required component of that training, not a standalone course.

Workplace bullying is not, by itself, illegal in California. AB 2053 requires training on abusive conduct but did not create a new legal claim for bullying. Bullying can still break the law when it involves harassment based on a protected characteristic, threats of violence or retaliation. Employers can discipline bullying under policy.

California law defines abusive conduct as malicious workplace behavior that a reasonable person would find hostile, offensive and unrelated to legitimate business interests. Examples include repeated insults or epithets, threatening or humiliating conduct, and gratuitous sabotage of someone's work. A single act usually does not qualify unless especially severe and egregious.

Common examples of workplace bullying include yelling, insults, sarcasm and spreading rumors about a coworker. Bullying also covers sabotaging work, deliberately excluding someone, setting impossible deadlines, piling on unreasonable workloads and giving unfair performance reviews. Threatening gestures, hazing and shoving are also forms of abusive conduct.