A legal case in Canada is casting a harsh light on how quickly “part of the job” distress can become a serious HR and organisational risk – with clear implications for employers across New Zealand
A former senior talent acquisition specialist at CBC North – part of Canada’s public broadcaster in Yellowknife, a remote northern city – has taken legal action, alleging he was effectively forced out of a toxic workplace marked by discrimination and harassment.
Karl Johnston, who worked at CBC North from 2018 to 2023, has sued in the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories, claiming the work environment became intolerable. The broadcaster disputes the allegations, which have not been tested in court, and says it will defend the case.
One detail from Johnston’s account has resonated well beyond Canada: his description of an unofficial “crying room” – a spare office that staff allegedly used to retreat and break down when work-related stress became overwhelming.
For HR leaders in New Zealand, that image cuts close to home in an environment where expectations around psychosocial safety are rising, and WorkSafe has made it clear that harm to mental health is a health and safety issue, not a “soft” concern.
Psychological safety and the normalisation of distress
The very existence of a crying room – formal or informal – should be treated as a warning sign, not a quirky feature of workplace culture.
“If an unofficial ‘crying room’ exists in a workplace, it's a major signal that employee stress and distress has become normalized, and psychological safety in the workplace has broken down,” says Brianna Madron, Director of People and Culture at Edmonton-based mental health company Dive Thru.
“HR can't frame this as employees not being ‘tough enough,’ as that mindset can quickly become a way to dismiss real harm and avoid accountability,” she says.
If employees are routinely seeking out a private space simply to cry, calm down or pull themselves together before returning to their desks, that’s no longer just a busy environment, Madron argues. It’s a potential mental health hazard – and one that demands a systemic response, not quiet endurance.
Allegations extending beyond workload
Johnston’s lawsuit alleges that problems at CBC North went well beyond heavy workloads or the usual friction of a high-pressure newsroom.
He claims managers maintained a secret “do not hire” list that disproportionately excluded marginalised, disabled and Indigenous candidates from consideration. He also alleges he was pressured to return early from short-term disability leave after undergoing multiple surgeries.
According to the claim, Johnston was “constructively dismissed” in 2023 after raising concerns about the workplace and being told to “stay in his lane”. CBC has declined to provide detailed comment while the case is before the courts, beyond stating that it will contest the allegations.
While the specifics are Canadian, the pattern is familiar to many New Zealand HR professionals: chronic workload pressure, unresolved conflict, alleged bias in recruitment, and a culture where challenging the status quo may be met with resistance rather than reflection.
A breakdown in psychological safety
At the centre of the “crying room” narrative is psychological safety – the belief that employees can speak up, show vulnerability, report concerns or make mistakes without fear of humiliation, punishment or subtle retaliation.
Madron says when staff come to rely on a private room just to get through the day, it suggests that responsibility for coping has been shifted onto individuals, instead of the organisation owning and addressing systemic issues.
When workers feel they must seek out secluded spaces to manage distress, it may indicate:
- They don’t feel safe raising issues through formal or informal channels.
- Pressure and demands have tipped from challenging to chronic and unsustainable.
- Conflict, disrespect or discrimination are going unaddressed.
In that context, HR’s task is not to champion “resilience” or “grit” in isolation but to interrogate what, exactly, is driving employees away from shared spaces and into isolation – and to treat the answers as risk data, not personal weakness.
A human issue – and a business risk for NZ employers
Madron argues that circumstances like those alleged at CBC North must be understood as both a people issue and a business risk.
“It impacts performance and creates real financial risk — we know there’s a clear link between psychological safety and business results — and it impacts people, and people deserve better,” she says.
For New Zealand organisations operating under the Health and Safety at Work Act and WorkSafe’s guidance on managing psychosocial risks, that framing is critical. If a crying room becomes normalised, it isn’t a safety valve – it’s a symptom of uncontrolled risk.
Madron suggests HR leaders elevate these issues with the same seriousness as physical hazards by:
- Bringing clear data and themes to executive discussions – including burnout indicators, mental health–related leave, ACC and disability claims, resignation trends, internal complaints and engagement results.
- Setting predefined thresholds for escalation – for example, recurring themes in exit interviews, persistently high turnover in a particular team, or visible distress becoming common enough that staff reference “needing to go cry somewhere”.
- Tying psychological safety directly to the employer’s duty to protect mental health, as well as to the downstream costs of absenteeism, turnover, lost productivity, reputational damage and legal exposure.
Psychological health, she says, should be treated as a core business metric, tracked and reviewed with the same rigour as financial performance and operational KPIs.
The aim, Madron adds, is not to place blame solely on frontline managers but to ensure they “have the expectations, tools, coaching, and accountability needed to lead psychologically safe teams.”
Remote, regional and small operations: extra vigilance
In Canada, the CBC North case centres on a relatively small and remote operation. In New Zealand, that dynamic has clear parallels: regional offices, small branches, isolated facilities and satellite teams that may receive less direct oversight from head office.
In these settings, local decisions by HR and people leaders can carry substantial legal, reputational and human consequences for the wider organisation. The culture on the ground may diverge significantly from the policies and values described on corporate websites.
For HR leaders, that makes informal signals as important as formal complaints. Staff jokes about crying in the toilets, a well-known “quiet room” where people go to break down, or whispered warnings about particular managers can all be early indicators of deteriorating psychological safety.
Lessons for HRD readers in New Zealand
The details of Johnston’s case will play out in a Canadian courtroom. But for HR professionals in New Zealand, the bigger lessons are closer to home:
- When distress becomes normalised, it is no longer a private issue – it is a workplace risk.
- Spaces employees retreat to in tears are not benefits; they are barometers.
- Treating psychological safety as a compliance tick-box, rather than a core business and people metric, leaves organisations exposed.
A “crying room” – official or otherwise – is not just a place employees go to cope. It’s a signpost that something in the system needs to change, before it becomes the subject of the next legal claim, media story or WorkSafe inquiry.
