What the Cal/OSHA General Industry Workplace Violence Standard Will Require

California's general-industry workplace violence prevention standard is the formal Title 8 regulation that Cal/OSHA is required to develop and submit to the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board (OSHSB) under Labor Code Section 6401.9 (enacted by SB 553 in 2023). Section 6401.9 directs OSHSB to adopt the standard no later than December 31, 2026. Until the permanent regulation is in place, California employers in non-healthcare settings must comply with the statutory workplace violence prevention plan (WVPP) requirements that became enforceable on July 1, 2024 under SB 553.

Cal/OSHA released an initial discussion draft on July 15, 2024, a revised discussion draft on May 13, 2025, and a further revised draft on April 24, 2026 with public comments closed June 1, 2026. The April 2026 draft expands scope to “all employers, employees, places of employment, employer-provided housing, and employer-provided transportation,” with an exception for employers with fewer than ten employees in workplaces not accessible to the public that maintain compliant Injury and Illness Prevention Programs. An OSHSB advisory committee has met repeatedly to work through open questions, including the definition of “employee representative,” whether stalking should be treated as workplace violence, and the scope of covered hazards. Final approval of the standard is anticipated in late summer 2026, with an implementation date of January 1, 2027.

Based on the April 2026 discussion draft, the forthcoming standard is expected to carry forward the core SB 553 framework and add more prescriptive requirements. Covered employers would be required to establish, implement, and maintain a written workplace violence prevention plan; identify and evaluate workplace violence hazards; implement engineering, work-practice, and administrative controls to correct those hazards; respond to and investigate workplace violence incidents; provide initial and ongoing training (including, where training is not delivered in person, an interactive question-and-answer mechanism with response within one business day from a person knowledgeable about the plan); and maintain a violent incident log along with training, inspection, and incident records for a set retention period.

Status (May 2026)

Active rulemaking. Most recent revised draft dated April 24, 2026 with public comment period open through June 1, 2026. OSHSB remains under a statutory deadline to adopt a final standard no later than December 31, 2026; final-vote and adoption are anticipated late summer 2026, with an implementation date of January 1, 2027. SB 553's statutory WVPP, violent incident log, and training requirements remain in effect and fully enforceable in the interim.

Who Will Need to Comply

The standard is being developed for non-healthcare general industry and will cover the broad set of California employers already subject to SB 553. That includes retail, hospitality, manufacturing, warehousing and logistics, transportation, banking and financial services, professional services, property management, education, and public-sector workplaces. Healthcare facilities that fall under Cal/OSHA's existing healthcare-specific workplace violence prevention standard (Title 8, Section 3342) will continue to be governed by that rule, though they remain subject to SB 553's violent incident log obligations. Expected exceptions in the new general-industry standard include employees teleworking from locations not controlled by the employer and certain small employers operating in workplaces not accessible to the public.

Key Requirements Expected in the Final Standard

Employers should expect the final Title 8 regulation to require, at a minimum, a written workplace violence prevention plan with documented procedures for identifying and evaluating workplace violence hazards, correcting identified hazards, responding to actual or potential workplace violence emergencies, and conducting post-incident investigation. Employers will be required to maintain a violent incident log covering every workplace violence incident, including date, time, location, type of violence, and a factual description of what occurred and how the incident was handled. Initial and refresher training must be interactive and delivered whenever the plan changes, when new hazards are identified, and on an annual basis at a minimum. Recordkeeping, inspection-readiness, and anti-retaliation provisions are expected to be more prescriptive than the SB 553 statutory baseline, with Cal/OSHA authorized to issue citations and penalties for non-compliance.

How IntelliSee Supports Compliance

IntelliSee gives California general-industry employers a technology layer that directly addresses the hazard-identification, engineering-control, and incident-response expectations of both SB 553 and the forthcoming Cal/OSHA general-industry standard. The platform turns an organization's existing IP security cameras into an autonomous 24/7 monitoring system, using AI to surface threats the moment they appear rather than relying on staff to watch live video.

IntelliSee's AI weapon detection continuously scans for visibly brandished firearms at entrances, parking lots, sales floors, warehouses, lobbies, and back-of-house areas, alerting security and facility leadership in seconds so response can begin before a violent incident escalates. The platform's fall detection adds a complementary safety capability by identifying persons-down events that often accompany or precede workplace violence incidents. Because IntelliSee functions as a continuous engineering control, it directly supports the “methods for correcting identified hazards” requirement carried forward from SB 553 into the draft general-industry standard.

IntelliSee uses no facial recognition, which keeps deployments clean under California's privacy laws, including CCPA and CPRA employee-data requirements. The platform runs on existing camera infrastructure, which is a decisive advantage for multi-site California employers that need to scale workplace violence hazard monitoring across retail locations, distribution centers, hospitality properties, or campus environments without a capital-intensive camera refresh. Alert metadata and logs generated by IntelliSee also support the written documentation and incident-log obligations the final standard is expected to impose.

California Workplace Violence Prevention – General Industry Standard (Cal/OSHA Rulemaking)

What the Cal/OSHA General Industry Workplace Violence Standard Will Require

Status (May 2026)

Who Will Need to Comply

Key Requirements Expected in the Final Standard

How IntelliSee Supports Compliance

Related Legislation & Resources

Turn Legislative Mandates Into a Working Safety Program