Time For HR Departments to Bring More Intelligence to Their Roles

It is widely known that one of HR departments' primary roles is to protect the company in dealings with the company's own employees. There is nothing wrong with this and there is a definite need for this function. However, there is also an almost universal belief that HR will support managers over those they manage in virtually every case regardless of the circumstances. To whatever degree this is true, the recent Novartis ruling should make it clear to HR department heads that protecting the company and supporting managers regardless of the managers' transgressions can be mutually exclusive propositions.



One part of the case involved a female rep who became pregnant. The record seems to indicate that the rep, who had been productive in her territory, was fired because her manager did not want her territory to be empty while she took maternity leave and family leave time. From the trial transcript, which includes both the rep's testimony and emails between her manager and the HR director, it appears that HR could have realized that a problem was developing. To protect the company, the HR department could have alerted the rep's manager to the reasons there could be a perception of improper action on his part and prevented him from going through with his plans. For example, one of the manager's actions was to call a meeting with the rep while she was still on maternity leave to question her about call activity and sample reports. This clearly should not have happened.



Perhaps the HR director was only acting within corporate guidelines when she ignored the warning signs of this situation. We will likely never know the full story. However, if plaintiffs continue to bring such cases to court successfully, then maybe HR departments will begin to make more intelligent decisions about when supporting managers conflicts with their role in protecting the company.