One in four employees have considered quitting because of their mental health.
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Mental Health Is Now a Retention Problem. For Some Employers, It's Also a Legal One.

One in four employees have considered quitting because of their mental health.

Let that sink in.

Not compensation. Not commute. Not a bad boss. Mental health.

The latest NAMI-Ipsos Workplace Mental Health poll paints a pretty stark picture: employees are stressed, overwhelmed, and—critically—don't feel safe talking about it at work. Nearly half fear judgment. Even fewer trust HR or leadership with these conversations.

That's not just a culture problem. It's a retention problem. And, increasingly, a legal one.

What can employers actually do about it?

Start with the basics. The same NAMI-Ipsos survey found that more than 80% of employees want training on stress, burnout, and crisis response. Give it to them—not a one-off webinar no one remembers, but ongoing, practical training for both employees and managers.

Train managers to recognize warning signs—withdrawal, missed deadlines, sudden performance drops—and to respond appropriately. Not as therapists, but as informed leaders who know when to listen and when to escalate.

Make your resources visible and usable. An EAP buried in a handbook isn't a benefit. Regularly communicate what's available, how to access it, and normalize using it. If leadership never talks about these tools, employees assume they shouldn't use them.

Flexibility matters more than most employers realize. A significant share of the workforce is in what's sometimes called the "sandwich generation"—simultaneously caregiving for children and aging parents. For these employees, rigid schedules and unsustainable workloads aren't just inconvenient; they're breaking points. Thoughtful scheduling, remote options, and realistic workload expectations go a long way toward reducing burnout before it becomes a resignation.

And then there's culture—the piece that makes or breaks everything else. If employees believe speaking up will make them look weak or cost them opportunities, they'll stay silent until they quit. Leaders set the tone. When mental health is treated as legitimate and discussable, stigma starts to erode. When it isn't, all the EAP communications in the world won't matter.

Where does the ADA come into play?

Not every stressed employee has a disability. But some do.

When an employee's mental health condition rises to the level of a disability—and the employer knows or should know about it—the ADA's reasonable accommodation obligations are triggered. That doesn't require magic words. "I'm struggling with anxiety and need help managing my workload" can be enough to start the interactive process.

From there, the obligation is familiar: engage in good-faith dialogue and consider reasonable accommodations. That might include modified schedules, remote work, additional breaks, leave, or adjusted job duties.

Here's where many employers go wrong: they treat what looks like a performance problem as only a performance problem. An employee starts missing deadlines, disengages, gets a PIP—and no one stops to ask whether a medical condition might be in play. That's not just a missed opportunity. Depending on the circumstances, it can be a legal liability.

Ignoring the issue, or treating it purely as a conduct matter without exploring whether something deeper is going on, isn't a neutral choice. Once an employer knows or should know that a mental health condition may be affecting an employee's work, the obligation to engage has begun.

The bottom line

The mental health crisis in the workplace isn't going away. Employers who take it seriously—with real training, visible resources, flexible structures, and cultures where people feel safe enough to speak up—will have a meaningful advantage in retaining the people they've worked hard to hire.

Because if you don't create a workplace where people can cope, they'll find one where they can.

Employers can no longer count on private arbitration when sexual harassment is on the docket

Employers love arbitration agreements. They keep disputes private and out of court.

Unless, that is, sexual harassment is in the case.

An Ohio appellate court just made that crystal clear in Hansbrough v. Marshall Dennehey.

The employer did what employers do. It pointed to a signed arbitration agreement and moved to compel arbitration of the employee's claims.

That used to be a strong move. Then Congress passed the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act. That changed everything.

The question in Hansbrough wasn't whether the plaintiff would ultimately prove harassment. It was much earlier in the case: did the complaint plausibly allege sexual harassment occurring after March 3, 2022 (the EFAA's effective date)? The court said yes.

And under Ohio's notice-pleading standard, that was enough. Once the plaintiff cleared that low bar, the EFAA applied. And once the EFAA applied, the arbitration agreement could not be enforced—not just for the harassment claim, but for the entire case.

Read that again. Not just the harassment count. The entire case.

That's the real takeaway. This wasn't a merits decision. It was a procedural one. But procedural doesn't mean unimportant. It means the fight over where the case gets decided—court versus arbitration—may now turn on how a complaint is drafted.

The court didn't need to reach a harder question—whether post-EFAA retaliation tied to pre-EFAA harassment would independently trigger the statute. The plaintiff's allegations of post-EFAA harassment made that unnecessary.

But don't miss what this means in practice. Sexual harassment claims rarely travel alone. They come bundled with retaliation, discrimination, and other statutory claims. And under the EFAA, one viable harassment allegation may keep that entire bundle in court.

Arbitration agreements no longer operate as universal shields.

If your risk analysis assumes you can push most employment disputes behind closed doors, you need to revisit that assumption. In fact, one well-pleaded harassment claim may be all it takes to blow up arbitration entirely.

The Supreme Court lowered the bar. Employers should take notice.

Last year, in Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, SCOTUS rewrote what counts as an "adverse employment action" under Title VII. The old rule required something "materially" adverse—real harm. That's gone. Now, if an employee is left even a little worse off in the terms or conditions of employment, that's enough.

That's a big deal. It opens the door to challenges over everyday workplace decisions that courts used to dismiss as trivial.

But here's the nuance: the bar is lower—not nonexistent.

Enter Walsh v. HNTB Corp.

Walsh, a long-time IT employee, was placed on a performance improvement plan. She completed it. No demotion. No pay cut. She later resigned and claimed age discrimination, arguing that the PIP itself was an adverse action.

Under pre-Muldrow law, that claim was dead on arrival. Post-Muldrow? It at least gets a serious look.

The First Circuit acknowledged the new standard: any change that leaves an employee worse off in their job conditions can qualify. And importantly, it made clear that some PIPs will meet that test.

But Walsh still lost. Her PIP didn't actually change anything that mattered. No new duties. No reduced opportunities. No impact on pay, title, or advancement. The court called it what it was—"documented counseling."

That's the lesson. A PIP is no longer automatically safe. But it's not automatically actionable either. It depends on what it does.

A PIP can now be an adverse action if it:
📝 Adds worse or more burdensome responsibilities
📝 Limits promotion or transfer opportunities
📝 Impacts compensation or advancement
📝 Meaningfully alters how the job is performed

Walsh's PIP did none of these. So, the employer won.

But don't get too comfortable. Here's what employers should be doing right now:

First, draft PIPs like they'll be Exhibit A. Because they will be. Tie them to objective performance issues and avoid vague, subjective critiques.

Second, be careful about layering on consequences. The more a PIP changes how someone works—or what opportunities they have—the more it starts to look like an adverse action.

Third, stay consistent. Disparate treatment claims just got easier to plead and harder to dismiss early.

Fourth, train your managers. "It's just a PIP" is no longer a safe assumption.

Muldrow didn't take the bar away. But it dropped it. And Walsh shows how low employers now have to go to get under it.

The 3rd nominee for the Worst Employer of 2026 is … The Dead Baby

Some cases hit harder than others. This is one of them.

A Hamilton County, Ohio, jury just tagged Total Quality Logistics with a $22.5 million verdict. The reason? It refused to let a pregnant employee work from home—despite two doctors' orders—and her baby died as a result.

Let that sink in.

Chelsea Walsh had a high-risk pregnancy. After an emergency procedure, her doctor ordered modified bed rest and remote work. Not optional. Not a suggestion. A medical directive aimed at keeping her pregnancy viable.

She did what employees are supposed to do. She asked.

Her employer said no. Not once. Repeatedly.

Even after a second doctor confirmed that working from home was necessary to prevent further complications, the company held the line. Come into the office. Or don't work at all.

Only after a third party intervened did TQL finally relent and allow remote work. But it was too late. Later that same day, Walsh suffered complications and delivered her daughter, Magnolia, at 20 weeks. The baby lived only a few hours.

A jury heard those facts and concluded that this wasn't just bad judgment, it was negligence that cost a life.

TQL says it "disagrees with the verdict" and is "evaluating legal options." Of course it does. What else was it supposed to say after a jury called them out for an indefensible decision.

Here's the part employers need to understand: this wasn’t a close call.

A pregnant employee. A documented medical condition. Two doctors saying "work from home." And a job that could have been done remotely. This is textbook reasonable accommodation territory.

Instead, TQL chose rigidity over humanity, control over common sense, and policy over people.

And now it owns a $22.5 million reminder that those choices have consequences.

If you're an employer still treating accommodation requests like inconveniences to be managed instead of obligations to be met, pay attention. Juries are. Which makes this an easy call for the latest nominee for the Worst Employer of 2026.

Employers can't outsource discrimination to an algorithm

AI is new and shiny. Employment law is not.

Mobley v. Workday proves the point. The court concluded that employers don't get to outsource liability just because they've outsourced the tool to an AI vendor.

The plaintiffs, a nationwide class of job applicants over the age of 40, allege that employers' use of Workday’s AI-driven screening tools discriminates on the basis of age. Whether those claims ultimately stick is a question for another day. But the legal framework governing them is old, settled, and very familiar. Discrimination is discrimination—whether it's carried out by a hiring manager, a spreadsheet, or an outsourced algorithm.

What would have been surprising is the opposite outcome—if the court had said, "Not your problem, employer, your vendor did it." That's not how employment law works. It never has been.

If your hiring process produces a disparate impact, you own it. Full stop.

This case—and others like it percolating through the courts—should recalibrate how employers think about HR tech. AI doesn't create new legal obligations. It just exposes how seriously you're taking the ones that already exist.

So what should you be doing now?

Start with your contracts. If you're relying on a vendor's AI to source, screen, or rank candidates, you need to understand exactly how liability is allocated. Who is indemnifying whom? For what claims? With what caps and carveouts? "Trust us" is not a risk mitigation strategy.

Next, build audit rights into those agreements—and use them. You should have the contractual ability to test your vendor's tools for disparate impact and to obtain meaningful information about how those tools function. If you can't evaluate it, you shouldn't be using it.

Also, don't treat AI as a black box. You don't need to code it, but you do need to understand how it's trained, what data it relies on, and where bias might creep in. Speed and efficiency are great. Not at the expense of compliance.

Finally, own the outcomes. If a tool flags—or filters out—candidates, that's your hiring decision. Regulators and courts aren't going to draw a distinction between "human" and "machine-assisted" discrimination.

AI may be the new frontier. The rules governing it are not. Ignore that at your peril.

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