Fast Facts: Employee Risk by the Numbers
Workplace issues don’t become lawsuits overnight.
They start small: An employee complaint, a conduct issue or an unresolved conflict. Without a best practice-embedded framework built on decades of employee relations expertise, these issues escalate — building into financial, legal, operational and reputational risk.
When Employee Relations Issues Escalate, So Do Their Costs.
The cost of defending a case through trial:¹
- $75,000: Settles before trial
- $125,000+: Pre-trial defense costs
- $175k-$250k: Goes through trial
Discrimination and Harassment Litigation Has Impacted Nearly Every Corporation.
- 99% of Fortune 500 companies have paid a settlement in at least one discrimination or sexual harassment lawsuit since 2000.²
- 1 in 5 organizations will face an employment lawsuit this year.³
Employee Relations Case Volume is Surging. Regulators Are Taking Note.
- 15.5 claims per 1,000 employees – Discrimination, harassment and retaliation allegations reached the highest rate in Benchmark Study history, up from 14.7 per 1,000 in 2024.⁴
- 145.5 cases per 1,000 employees – Overall employee relations case volume, approaching the decade high set in 2022.⁴
- 26,635 federal employment lawsuits were filed in 2025, a record high, up 10% from 2024.⁵
Case Counts Don’t Tell the Full Story.
Tracking cases isn’t enough.
Without visibility into issue type and substantiation rates, risk signals remain hidden until they escalate.
- 62% of organizations do not track the number of issues per case. 3 in 5 organizations are unaware of the complexity hidden within their case data.⁴
- Just 1 in 3 teams track substantiation rates by issue type. Without this granularity, teams can’t surface patterns in discrimination, harassment and retaliation, or defend themselves when cases escalate to regulatory agencies.⁴
In an unforgiving regulatory environment, employee risk can have far-reaching consequences. The difference is whether you can see that risk early enough to act. Use our employee risk calculator to see how much your current employee relations systems and processes could be costing you.
Sources:
¹Novian & Novian, LLP; July 2026, “The Average Cost to Defend an Employment Lawsuit”
²Good Jobs First; January 2019, “Big Business Bias”
³Market.Biz; February 2026, “HR Compliance and Legal Issues Statistics and Facts”
⁴HR Acuity; June 2026, “Tenth Annual Employee Relations Benchmark Study”
⁵Lex Machina; 2026 Employment Litigation Data, via Hoyer Law Group
