These days all it takes is one disgruntled employee to lodge a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). And, once that complaint is lodged and an employer has found itself on the losing end of litigation with the EEOC…the end result is a Consent Decree, or settlement agreement that outlines the employer’s obligations to “right” what the EEOC states the company has done “wrong.” More than likely the EEOC will mandate in the Consent Decree a specified amount of annual training on all of the federal anti-discrimination laws the EEOC enforces, such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, Americans with Disabilities Act, Age Discrimination in Employment Act, Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and so on. Additionally, what we’ve seen happen with EEOC Consent Decrees over the last several years is that employers must also provide internal investigations training for HR management teams and those designated internally to handle employee relations’ complaints.
Many attorneys who work on behalf of employers will engage in negotiations with the EEOC on how many years an employer will be obligated to provide annual training and the specified number of contact hours of training. However, sometimes the employer could be on the losing end of the negotiations… and be required to provide training on an annual basis for three, four, or possibly even five, consecutive years.
Whenever an employer is obligated to comply with a Consent Decree, there is usually only a short window of time to begin identifying a training professional to meet the requirements. At RPC, we have experience in both designing EEO training programs and we have been delivering this type of training since we founded the company in 2002. We can provide you with anti-harassment and anti-discrimination training program that will meet the requirements the EEOC has mandated. And, we can provide a customized instructional design with the contact hours required–and provide you with training materials that your legal counsel can submit on an annual basis to the EEOC, to meet your legal obligations.
If your organization simply wants to implement a good EEO training program, but has not been held to a legal requirement to do so, we can provide our EEO training in a 1-day or a 2-day classroom workshop. Or, we can provide it via our e-learning solution Preventing Discrimination and Harassment, which is a highly interactive online course that can be delivered to all employees and managers. The employee program is 30 minutes in length and the manager program is 60 minutes in length. The online program can be accessed on-demand and can even be branded with your company logo and include a preliminary segment of your organization’s EEO policy. The online program can be implemented into your in-house learning management system (LMS) or we can provide you with an LMS.
At RPC, we have seasoned training instructors with decades of experience in delivering classroom and online compliance education. We can provide a qualified training instructor to travel to your location(s) or a designated site to facilitate the training program. Or, you can send your employees to our executive training center in Boca Raton, Florida. (25 miles north of Ft. Lauderdale) For a one-day program (6-8 contact hours per day) the schedule would need to be an 8-5 schedule with a working lunch. For contact hours that would exceed 8 hours in a day, the program would need to be extended to a 2-day program.
The cost of our EEO training programs are always on a per-person basis and all-inclusive of instructor travel and incidental expenses, all books and materials, the instructional design of the program, and Certificate of Training for each attendee.
We are happy to discuss with you your exact requirements and help you to develop a plan to meet your compliance obligations. We are often asked, “How much do you charge for your anti-harassment and anti-discrimination training programs?”
The answer is it depends. What really are the determining factors in cost are the number of employees in need of the training, whether they are managers or employees, the number of contact hours required, geographic location where the training program needs to be delivered, the number of days required, and whether or not all of the employees are fluent in English.
For employers that have to train employees with whom English is their 2nd language, and would need the program delivered in another language, we can help you with that, too. We have instructors who are fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
A general guide regarding cost for training can be found in the FAQ section at Rpchr.com. For more information, please contact us at Info@rpchr.com or at (800) 517-7129 and press Extension 2 for Client Services.