A specialist practice in a generalist market.
For two decades, we have done one thing: build the prevention, reporting, response, and documentation the Faragher/Ellerth Affirmative Defense may require. Investigations, training, hotline, documentation: assembled as one coordinated system for employers who cannot afford another EEOC charge.
Most employers find out their defense is broken when it's already too late.
By the time the EEOC charge arrives, or the state agency requests training records, or opposing counsel subpoenas the complaint file, the defense is whatever is already in the cabinet. There is no time to build it then.
Most HR teams know this. Most outside employment counsel know this. But the daily work of installing and maintaining the infrastructure sits in an awkward gap: too operational for a law firm, too specialized for a generalist HR consultant, too evidentiary for a generic LMS, and too sensitive for in-house HR to investigate alone.
empathiHR exists in that gap. We are not a law firm. We are not a consulting boutique. We are not a learning management system. We are a single practice, built specifically to install and maintain the structural defense the Supreme Court asked employers to build in 1998, and to do it as ongoing operating work, not a one-time project.
Twenty years, one methodology
The methodology takes shape
The Faragher/Ellerth Affirmative Defense, articulated by the Supreme Court in 1998, was still being interpreted by lower courts when the founding investigators of the practice empathiHR later acquired began documenting workplace harassment matters in Texas. The early engagements established the documentation discipline and neutral-investigator standard that would become the empathiHR methodology.
Multi-state expansion
California's SB 1343, New York's Labor Law §201-g, and Connecticut's Time's Up Act each transformed the compliance-training landscape. Our practice expanded to handle the multi-state complexity, mapping rosters to mandates, tracking certifications, and absorbing legislative changes as they shipped.
empathiHR launches
empathiHR launches and acquires the practice, adopting the program refined over the prior 17 years and unifying policies, training, reporting, investigations, and consulting into one documented system.
$2.9M in estimated avoided exposure in a single year
A national technology client avoided an estimated $2,895,000 in EEOC and litigation exposure in the first year after empathiHR fielded 153 workplace-misconduct complaints, zero of which became EEOC charges. The engagement now anchors the case studies page.
Building Safer Ministries launches
The existing market for faith-based organizations was focused on child-safety prevention, leaving workplace investigations and the Affirmative Defense unaddressed for ministry contexts. We launched Building Safer Ministries as a specialized sub-brand to serve that gap: the full empathiHR Affirmative Defense Program, on the same platforms, with training built specifically for churches and ministries. Religion-based EEOC charges have more than doubled since FY2021.
1,000+ charges dismissed. Zero adverse actions.
The same methodology that opened the practice now serves clients across automotive, hospitality, restaurants, healthcare, technology, and faith-based ministry, across every state with a mandatory training requirement and far beyond.
Four principles, twenty years of practice
Defense is structural, not heroic
An Affirmative Defense is not built in the moment a charge arrives. It is built every day in the months and years before. Our practice exists to install and maintain that structure so the heroic moment is never required.
Neutral above all
Investigations conducted by anyone with a stake in the outcome are not investigations. They are documentation of foregone conclusions. Our investigators are neutral by design, and that neutrality is non-negotiable, including when it produces inconvenient findings for our own clients.
Documentation is the asset
What survives an investigation, an EEOC charge, or a deposition is the documentation. Every interview is video-recorded with the participant's consent. Every complaint is logged from intake. Every training completion is timestamped to the individual. The documentation is what the defense stands on.
Honest about the limits
We do not replace your employment counsel. We do not replace your in-house HR. We do not run engagement surveys, write your DEI program, or coach your executives. We do one thing (workplace misconduct prevention, response, and the Affirmative Defense) and we do it as a unified practice.
Headquartered in McKinney. Working nationwide.
Our team is based in McKinney, TX, with investigators and program managers covering every state with a mandatory training mandate plus the substantial number of states without one. Most of our work is delivered remotely with on-site engagements when an investigation requires them.
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The compliance assessment is the cleanest way to understand whether the empathiHR practice is the right fit for your organization. No sales pressure.