Four stories this week, four different angles, one underlying problem. When trust breaks down, nothing else works. Employees hide what they know. AI creates more overhead than it removes. Accommodation policies become blanket denials. And the people who speak up find out what happens next. Employee relations sits at the center of all of it.
Welcome back to “This Week in Employee Relations,” your fast-scan digest of the employee relations headlines shaping policy, culture and compliance. Catch up in five minutes; walk into the week with the context (and the talking points) your organization expects.
🤖 Your Employees Are Hiding Their AI Use. Here’s Why That’s an ER Problem.
HBR published USC research this week with a finding worth sitting with. Employees are developing valuable AI workflows and choosing not to share them. Not because of weak governance or missing tools. Because they don’t trust what their organizations will do with that knowledge once it’s visible. They fear being judged as less capable, assigned more work or made easier to replace. Psychological safety, the researchers found, predicts AI disclosure more reliably than any formal policy.
➝ ER Insight: Sound familiar? The same dynamic that drives employees to hide AI use is the one that stops them from reporting misconduct. When speaking up doesn’t feel safe, people go quiet. Your AI adoption strategy and your speak-up culture are solving the same underlying problem. If employees aren’t sharing what they know, that’s not a communication gap. It’s a trust gap.
🍩 The “100% Healed” Policy Is Still Out There. A $250,000 Settlement Is the Reminder.
On June 5, the EEOC announced that Dunkin’ Donuts franchisees in Massachusetts will pay $250,000 to resolve a disability discrimination suit. The Daly/Kenney Group required employees with any medical restrictions to obtain a doctor’s note stating they had none before returning to work. Employees who couldn’t comply were placed on unpaid leave and often pushed out entirely. The companies also improperly mixed employee medical records with personnel files.
➝ ER Insight: A blanket return-to-work standard is not a reasonable accommodation process. It’s the absence of one. The ADA requires individual assessment every time. If your organization is applying uniform standards without evaluating whether an employee can perform essential job functions with or without accommodation, this case is a direct signal to revisit that now. And keep medical records separate from personnel files. That’s not a technicality.
📊 AI Is Changing How Work Gets Done. Is Your Organization Measuring It Right?
HR Dive reported today on Glean’s Work AI Index, a survey of 6,000 digital workers. AI is saving workers roughly 11 hours a week on average, and 75% say it makes them more productive. But the research also found that significant time goes into making AI outputs usable: Verifying results, adding context, correcting errors. That’s not wasted effort. It’s the real work of integrating AI responsibly. The gap is that most organizations aren’t accounting for it.
➝ ER Insight: This is the AI adoption conversation employee relations leaders need to be part of. The employees doing this work carefully are your most conscientious people. If that effort is invisible in performance reviews and workload assessments, you’re not measuring productivity accurately. You’re measuring output while missing what it actually takes to produce it well. That’s a fairness issue. And it’s one ER is positioned to name.
🦺 The Agency That Enforces Workplace Safety Couldn’t Protect Its Own Employee.
An OSHA inspector sued the Department of Labor on June 3, alleging her supervisor sexually harassed her, made racist comments and retaliated when she complained. After she raised concerns with HR, her performance rating dropped from outstanding to minimally successful and her telework agreement was revoked. The lawsuit argues that because management created and enabled the violations, liability is imputed to the agency.
→ ER Insight: No organization is exempt from this. Not even the one that writes the safety rules. When a supervisor is the harasser and HR knows but doesn’t act, the employer is automatically liable under Title VII. That’s not a gray area. And when a performance rating drops the week after someone complains, that’s not a coincidence. That’s retaliation. If your managers can’t recognize that pattern, the training gap is yours to own.
We’re tracking the headlines so you can focus on what matters most: Early action, consistent resolution and a culture where everyone feels safe speaking up.
What’s the hardest part of building real trust in your ER processes right now? Drop your thoughts below.
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