When I was in management, our HR did not function like this and was very supportive of the companies interests which happended to be making sure our employees w

When I was in management, our HR did not function like this and was very supportive of the companies interests which happended to be making sure our employees were not wrongfully or spitefully terminated. I am not saying this is the case everywhere, but my experience with HR was not the way you describe. We had identified a poorly performing employee and went to HR to talk about progressive discipline. When we mentioned stats, they asked to see the same stats for all other employees on our team as well. This was not to prevent us from firing the employee but to protect the company from accusations of wrongful termination down the road. Even so, we had to enter into a several month progressive discipline process where the employee was aware of what metric was a problem, how to correct it and how we could be supportive. That was the role HR played. They gave us a framework to proceed with a safe and well thought-out termination.