AI Mental Health Screening Enters the Workplace, Sparking Privacy Controversy: Who Owns Employee Psychological Data?
HR tech company Workday's AI mental health screening tool is rapidly gaining adoption among Fortune 500 companies, but employee unions and privacy organizations strongly oppose it, arguing that companies have no right to access employees' mental health data.
AI Mental Health Screening Enters the Workplace, Sparking Privacy Controversy: Who Owns Employee Psychological Data?
MentalCheck, an AI mental health screening tool from American HR technology company Workday, has been adopted by over 100 Fortune 500 companies in the past three months. The tool assesses employees' mental health status by analyzing the tone of work emails, meeting participation, and scheduling patterns.
Workday claims MentalCheck can issue warnings up to 4 weeks before employees develop serious psychological problems, helping companies provide timely support. However, the AFL-CIO has issued a statement strongly opposing the tool, calling corporate monitoring of employees' mental states "a fundamental invasion of privacy."
Currently, there are no specific laws in the United States regulating the collection and use of employee mental health data by companies. Multiple members of Congress have expressed their intention to push for related legislation.
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