HR Acuity Study Finds Workplace Risk Is Rising Faster Than Companies Can Respond

HR Acuity, the leader in employee relations case management and investigations software, today released its Tenth Annual Employee Relations Benchmark Study. Drawing on a decade of data from 274 organizations representing nearly 9 million employees, the study finds case volumes and serious misconduct claims at or near all-time highs while staffing remains largely unchanged—a widening gap between risk and resources where litigation exposure builds and employee trust erodes.

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Case volumes and misconduct allegations rose sharply in tandem, underscoring the need for stronger processes and better evidence to proactively address escalating risk.

Discrimination, harassment and retaliation allegations surged to an all-time high of 15.5 issues per 1,000 employees. And, employee relations case volumes reached 145.5 issues per 1,000 employees in 2025, just short of the decade high.

Other workplace conflicts also spiked concurrently: the number of behavioral issues jumped 30% in a single year (29.2 per 1,000 employees), and performance issues rose 27% from 2024, reaching an average of 50.1 issues per 1,000 employees.

Most organizations attributed rising case volume to pressures originating outside of the workplace. Sixty percent (60%) of organizations pointed to political tensions, 59% to mental health challenges and 55% to broader societal crises. Additionally, the percentage of organizations that saw a rise in social media-related cases nearly doubled, from 22% to 39% since 2024.

Yet, organizational resources have not kept pace with the growing demands placed on the function.

The employee relations staffing ratio edged up only slightly, from 0.6 to 0.68 professionals per 1,000 employees, even as serious misconduct allegations have more than doubled since 2021. Plus, only one in four teams plans to hire employee relations professionals in 2026.

Data blind spots obscure the true scale of risk, leaving organizations unable to demonstrate defensibility when it matters most.

Only 32% track substantiation by issue type, the granularity needed to surface patterns in discrimination, harassment and retaliation. And while the use of required investigation processes hit an all-time high, 38% of organizations still operate without a required process, leaving room for inconsistencies that can increase legal exposure.

AI is reshaping employee relations work, streamlining routine tasks and increasing the need for human oversight.

In 2025, AI adoption accelerated as 70% of teams experimented with or actively deployed AI for employee relations and investigations. The most common applications included drafting investigation reports with required human review (46%) and summarizing interview transcripts (45%). A smaller, more sophisticated portion of teams (21%) used AI to aggregate data to uncover trends and insights, up from just 5% the previous year.

Respondents also reported that employees increasingly used AI to write complaints, leading to more complex cases that require significantly greater investigative effort and discernment.

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“Ten years ago, the challenge was establishing employee relations as a discipline. Today, the challenge is scale,” said Deb Muller, founder and CEO of HR Acuity. “Case volumes, misconduct allegations and workplace complexity continue to rise while team sizes remain relatively unchanged. The organizations that succeed will be the ones that use data and AI not just to work faster, but to anticipate risk before it becomes a larger problem.”

The benchmark was conducted in partnership with Isurus Market Research and Consulting, an independent research firm. Data was collected from 274 organizations in the United States with at least 1,000 employees, which represents 8.8 million employees globally. The research was conducted January 23–March 24, 2026 with data reflecting employee relations practices from the calendar year 2025. The margin of error is +/- 5.9 percentage points (95% confidence interval).

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