Workplace Accommodation: When ChatGPT Becomes the Employee’s Legal Advisor

Workplace accommodation has become the number one HR support issue in our practice. What has changed is the volume of legally framed correspondence employers are expected to manage, often at considerable cost.

Employees are turning to ChatGPT to understand their rights, challenge employer decisions and produce lengthy, legally polished correspondence. In some cases, what should be a collaborative process begins to look more like preparation for a human rights complaint.

And employers are paying the price.

The Never-Ending Email Trail

An employer proposes an accommodation. The employee responds with a 1,000-word email questioning the decision, citing human rights obligations and requesting detailed explanations.

The employer responds. Another email arrives 3 minutes later with more questions. More challenges. More references to legal obligations.

ChatGPT can produce these communications in seconds, at no cost. And often, misses the boat with advice that is regurgitative in nature and not helpful in reaching solution. Meanwhile, the employer’s HR Advisor or lawyer must carefully review each one, assess the legal implications and prepare a response.

One side presses send. The other gets a bill.

The $5,000 Accommodation Problem

In my experience, a single workplace accommodation matter can easily generate more than $5,000 in HR and legal fees, sometimes far more. And that’s before a human rights complaint is even filed.

Add the hours spent by business owners and managers, the disruption to daily operations and the stress of navigating a potential legal dispute. For a small business, the burden can be enormous.

Here’s the uncomfortable reality: sometimes it costs more to manage and defend an accommodation decision than it would to negotiate a mutual separation.

Even when an employer has acted completely reasonably and in good faith.

Accommodation Is a Two-Way Street

Let’s be clear. Employees with legitimate accommodation needs deserve support, and employers have a legal duty to provide it up to the point of undue hardship.

But employees also have responsibilities. They must participate in the process, provide relevant information and consider reasonable solutions.

Accommodation does not mean employees get to dictate their preferred working conditions. Nor does it mean every employer decision constitutes discrimination.

And while extensive employee correspondence doesn’t prove bad faith, we shouldn’t pretend that every accommodation request is necessarily motivated by a genuine desire to return to productive work. From what I’m seeing, that simply isn’t the case in many of these accommodation matters.

When Did Accommodation Become a Legal Strategy?

ChatGPT isn’t the problem. It’s a useful tool that can help employees understand and exercise legitimate rights. But it’s also made it remarkably easy to create a lawyer-ready paper trail, challenge virtually every employer response and turn an ordinary HR matter into an expensive legal exercise.

The question isn’t whether employees should have rights. Of course they should.

The question is what happens when the process intended to help people stay employed becomes more focused on building a case against the employer than finding a way to make employment work.

And when settling becomes cheaper than standing your ground, something is seriously