Employee relations teams are handling more workplace issues than ever—but they aren’t getting much bigger.
That’s the central finding from HR Acuity’s 10th Annual Employee Relations Benchmark Study, which paints a picture of HR departments grappling with rising misconduct complaints, growing workplace complexity, and expanding legal risk, all while staffing levels remain largely flat.
Based on responses from 274 organizations representing nearly 9 million employees worldwide, the report suggests that organizations are entering a new phase of employee relations—one where traditional processes are struggling to keep pace with increasing case volumes and AI-driven workplace changes.
Misconduct Complaints Reach Record Levels
Perhaps the study’s biggest takeaway is the continued rise in serious workplace allegations.
Reports involving discrimination, harassment, and retaliation climbed to 15.5 issues per 1,000 employees, the highest level recorded in the study’s decade-long history.
Overall employee relations case volumes also remained near historic highs, reaching 145.5 cases per 1,000 employees in 2025, just shy of the all-time peak.
The increase wasn’t limited to legal or compliance-related complaints.
Behavioral issues surged 30% year over year, reaching 29.2 cases per 1,000 employees, while performance-related cases jumped 27%, averaging 50.1 issues per 1,000 employees.
Taken together, the numbers indicate that HR teams aren’t simply handling more investigations—they’re managing a broader spectrum of workplace challenges, from conduct concerns to performance management and employee conflicts.
External Pressures Are Reshaping the Workplace
The report suggests many of these issues originate outside the office.
Sixty percent of surveyed organizations cited growing political tensions as a major contributor to increasing case volumes. Mental health challenges followed closely at 59%, while 55% pointed to broader societal crises affecting workplace dynamics.
Social media is becoming a bigger factor as well.
Organizations reporting social media-related employee relations cases nearly doubled over the past year, increasing from 22% in 2024 to 39% in 2025.
These findings reflect a broader trend across the HR technology industry: workplace issues are increasingly influenced by external events that employers cannot directly control but are still expected to manage effectively.
More Cases, But Nearly the Same Number of HR Professionals
Despite rising workloads, employee relations teams aren’t expanding at the same pace.
The average staffing ratio increased only marginally—from 0.6 to 0.68 employee relations professionals per 1,000 employees.
Even more striking, only one in four organizations plans to hire additional employee relations professionals in 2026.
That widening gap between workload and staffing could have significant consequences.
Higher caseloads often translate into longer investigation timelines, inconsistent documentation, and increased legal exposure. They can also erode employee confidence if concerns aren’t addressed quickly or transparently.
As organizations continue balancing compliance requirements with employee experience initiatives, employee relations appears to be becoming one of HR’s most resource-constrained functions.
Data Gaps Continue to Limit Risk Visibility
Although organizations are collecting more employee relations data than ever, many still lack the reporting needed to identify emerging workplace risks.
Only 32% of organizations track investigation substantiation rates by issue type—data that can help uncover recurring patterns involving discrimination, harassment, retaliation, or other misconduct.
The study also found that while formal investigation processes reached their highest adoption level to date, 38% of organizations still operate without a mandatory investigation framework.
That inconsistency can create challenges when organizations need to demonstrate fairness, compliance, or defensibility during legal proceedings or regulatory reviews.
For companies investing in governance and risk management, standardized employee relations workflows are becoming as important as the investigations themselves.
AI Moves Beyond Experimentation
Artificial intelligence is also becoming a standard part of employee relations operations.
According to the report, 70% of organizations have either experimented with or actively deployed AI for employee relations and workplace investigations during 2025.
Current adoption focuses primarily on administrative efficiency.
The most common use cases include:
- Drafting investigation reports with mandatory human review (46%)
- Summarizing interview transcripts (45%)
- Aggregating investigation data to identify workplace trends (21%)
That final use case represents one of the fastest-growing areas for AI adoption, rising from just 5% the previous year.
Interestingly, AI is influencing investigations from another direction as well.
Organizations reported that employees are increasingly using generative AI tools to draft workplace complaints, often producing more detailed submissions that require additional investigator time and greater scrutiny.
Rather than reducing workloads outright, AI appears to be changing the nature of employee relations work—automating repetitive tasks while increasing the importance of human judgment during complex investigations.
Employee Relations Is Becoming a Strategic Risk Function
The report reinforces a broader shift taking place across enterprise HR.
Employee relations is evolving from a reactive compliance function into a strategic discipline focused on organizational risk management, workforce trust, and data-driven decision-making.
As hybrid work, social polarization, mental health concerns, and AI continue reshaping workplaces, organizations may find that simply maintaining existing employee relations resources is no longer enough.
Instead, success will increasingly depend on combining standardized investigation processes, stronger analytics, and carefully governed AI tools to identify risks before they escalate.
For HR leaders, the message is straightforward: workplace complexity isn’t slowing down, and neither are employee expectations.
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