Take it from someone whose partner works in HR: they are not your friend. They may be nice people, they may try to help, but their _job_ is to protect the company's interests. Each time you talk to them about conflict, you're taking a bet your interests and theirs align.
In other news, for a bunch of smart people, engineers are spectacularly underunionized.
They are however, definitely interested in retention. They have a keen understanding of the total cost of finding and onboarding a new employee. If a particular executive is putting that in jeopardy then a good HR department will take note.
> They have a keen understanding of the total cost of finding and onboarding a new employee.
Because they will be involved in recruiting, they will also have a keen understanding of how much that increases their workload, which is otherwise pretty flimsy in a lot of cases. The more churn, the more they can justify their headcount.
They definitely are, but in a circumstance like this the most _urgent_ problem they've got is a bunch of ex-employees with a legal action brewing. Implicitly admitting liability without a quid-pro-quo isn't going to happen.
Which isn't to say HR won't want him gone. Just not yet.
In other news, for a bunch of smart people, engineers are spectacularly underunionized.