The HR & People Risks tab helps you identify potential hotspots within your workplace. This isn’t just about tracking sentiment—it’s about surfacing specific, actionable risks based on employee responses to legally and culturally relevant topics.

What are the five HR & People Risk Areas?

HR & People Risks are grouped into five core areas, each aligned to real-world risk scenarios and training topics. These categories help you understand where potential gaps in policy, behavior, or awareness may exist across your organization.

1. Harassment & Discrimination

This area includes questions related to workplace respect, identity-based treatment, and intervention when harmful behaviors occur. It covers concepts such as unconscious bias, bystander intervention, and respectful conduct. Example questions explore whether:

Employees treat others respectfully across lines of race, gender, and role.
Teams speak up when exclusion or biased comments occur.
Managers notice when someone is being excluded.

Why it matters:
Unaddressed issues here may signal legal exposure and can damage trust, morale, and employee retention.

2. Hiring, Performance Management, & Terminations

This category focuses on how fair and compliant your people processes are—from interview questions to evaluations and exits. It assesses whether employees understand their rights and feel those processes are applied consistently. Questions cover whether:

Job candidates with disabilities are treated fairly.
Teams use structured interview and evaluation processes.
Bias affects decisions around advancement or hiring.
People feel likability or favoritism trumps qualifications.

Why it matters:
Bias, favoritism, or improper practices in these areas can lead to compliance issues and impact talent development.

3. Workplace Safety

This area covers perceptions of physical and psychological safety, including topics like workplace violence prevention and safety reporting. It also addresses whether employees feel safe to speak up without retaliation. Questions cover whether:

People feel safe at work or have experienced intimidation.
Employees worry about potential workplace violence.
They feel comfortable reporting safety concerns.
Safety threats have come from coworkers, customers, or clients.

Why it matters:
Safety isn’t just about procedures—it’s about whether employees feel protected and supported at work.

4. Wage & Hour

This category includes questions related to fair pay, overtime, required breaks, and other compliance areas governed by wage and labor laws. Questions cover whether:

Employees follow timekeeping procedures without pressure to underreport hours.
Managers respect rules around meal and rest breaks.
Co-workers accommodate one another’s break time.
Employees feel safe raising time-tracking concerns.

Why it matters:
Wage and hour violations are one of the most common causes of employee lawsuits and often result in significant financial penalties.

5. HR Reporting & Retaliation

This section assesses whether employees know how to report issues and whether they believe retaliation will occur when concerns are raised. It includes awareness of HR policies, protection mechanisms, and trust in the reporting process. Questions cover whether:

People believe management will take complaints seriously.
Employees trust they can report misconduct without negative consequences.
Teams believe inappropriate behavior will be addressed.
Employees feel safe confronting bias or problematic behavior.

Why it matters:
If people don’t trust the reporting process, problems go unreported—and unresolved—putting the company at greater risk.

What does the Summary show me?

On this page, you’ll see a summary of results by risk category (e.g., Harassment & Discrimination, Workplace Safety). Each tile highlights:

The number of questions with Concerning, Warning, or Risky risk levels. If there's no questions to flag, then it'll say Healthy for all questions!
The total number of questions in that category
The related training topics that questions are drawn from

If you have not deployed the requisite training for a particular Risk Area, it will not populate.

This gives you a quick sense of which risk areas may require attention and where targeted training could make an impact.

What does "Scores by Risk Area" show me?

Clicking into any risk category (e.g., Harassment & Discrimination) opens a detailed view of the individual Likert-scale questions that power the category’s score. Note: only clients whose package includes this screen will be able to access it!

For each question, you’ll see:

The full question text
Percentage of healthy responses
Comparison to the industry average
A calculated risk level (Healthy, Warning, Concerning, or Risky)

This level of granularity lets you pinpoint exactly what employees are experiencing—and whether it's a perception issue or something more systemic.

Coming soon: Comparisons to longitudinal scores (i.e. scores last year) and organizations of similar size.

What does "% Healthy" mean?

“% Healthy” refers to the percentage of respondents who selected one of the three positive responses (e.g., Slightly Agree, Agree, or Strongly Agree).

For negatively worded questions (e.g., “I’ve heard people make negative stereotypical comments”), healthy responses come from employees who disagree (e.g., Slightly Disagree, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree) with the statement. In these cases, a high “% Healthy” still reflects a positive outcome—indicating that few people are observing or experiencing the negative behavior described.

A high healthy score means most employees feel positively about the topic, indicating a strong and constructive workplace culture. Lower scores may point to dissatisfaction, mistrust, or emerging risk areas that warrant closer review.

Why compare to industry benchmarks?

Each question is benchmarked against aggregated industry data from similar organizations. Internal scores show you where your teams stand—but benchmarks reveal how your culture stacks up externally. A score might look “fine” in isolation but could be trailing significantly behind peers.

What does the “Risk Level” icon mean?

The icon next to each question summarizes whether it presents a cultural or compliance risk:

Healthy: Scores are within a safe and productive range
Warning: Needs attention—trending low or nearing a risk threshold
Concerning: Warrants further investigation
Risky: High risk—immediate action is likely needed

These flags help you prioritize where to intervene first, especially when managing multiple risk areas.

What filters do I have available?

Use the filters in the left-hand sidebar to refine your results:

Risk Area: Focus on a specific domain like Workplace Safety or Wage & Hour
Response Type: Choose which training areas to include
Date Range: Select the timeframe for data (e.g., past 6 months)
Minimum Response Rate: Filter out low-participation segments
New Hires: Choose whether to include newer employees

Who is considered a new hire?

New hires are defined as respondents with less than 1 year of tenure at your organization. Since most training is delivered on an annual cycle, these employees will be flagged as “new hires” when they receive their first training shortly after joining. By the time they complete their second training cycle a year later, their responses will no longer fall into this bucket.

Still Have Questions?

Reach out to analytics@emtrain.com and our team will be happy to assist.