EEOC guidance warns Monday.com employers on caregiver discrimination

Caregiving is not a protected status by itself, but the way a manager responds to it can still create legal exposure. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s latest guidance puts scheduling, promotions, leave decisions, performance reviews and return-to-office expectations in the same frame: if assumptions about a worker’s family duties are driving treatment, the problem can become unlawful when it overlaps with sex, disability or another protected trait.

The commission has been warning employers about this for years. It issued questions-and-answers guidance in 2007, and its earlier work-family balance guidance in 2006 said changing workplace demographics had increased the risk of discrimination against working parents and others with caregiving responsibilities, including eldercare. The newer materials say those disputes can intersect with sex, including pregnancy, sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as race, color, religion, national origin, age, disability and genetic information. The commission also points employers toward flexible leave, part-time roles with proportional compensation and benefits, and training meant to cut down barriers to equal opportunity.

For monday.com, the guidance lands in a workplace that already relies on distributed teams and managerial discretion. The company says most teams work in the office three days a week under a hybrid model, while the rest of the time can be worked elsewhere. Its careers materials say candidates are considered regardless of family or parental status, and some job postings list parental leave among the benefits. Monday.com also says it has offices in Tel Aviv, New York, Denver, London, Warsaw, Sydney, Melbourne, São Paulo and Tokyo, and that more than 250,000 customers worldwide use its platform.

That matters because the biggest risk is not an explicit policy that says caregivers are unwelcome. It is inconsistent treatment disguised as flexibility. One manager may quietly excuse an early pickup, another may mark the same request as low commitment; one team may allow a remote day for eldercare, another may use the same request as a reason to stall a promotion or downgrade a review. In a company that built itself from a Tel Aviv launch after two years of development into a global SaaS employer, that inconsistency can spread fast.

Monday.com’s 2024 ESG report says the company formalized a global Inclusion strategy and expanded data collection and measurable goals, while chief people and legal officer Shiran Nawi oversees HR, legal affairs and compliance. That combination puts the burden on team leads as much as on policy writers: keep standards tied to output, document decisions, offer the same flexibility to comparable employees, and do not let caregiving assumptions shape access to opportunity.