Because there may be some confusion here about what HR does, I'll pick one of the less-salacious episodes, the RPX board seat issue, to illustrate how it would

Because there may be some confusion here about what HR does, I'll pick one of the less-salacious episodes, the RPX board seat issue, to illustrate how it would play out at an organization which had a competent HR department. First off, understand that discrimination based on sex or pregnancy is illegal in the United States. So if Ellen Pao walked into our hypothetical competent HR department and said that she had reason to believe that she's being discriminated against, HR would have cleared somebody's schedule to work with Ellen on this. It's serious shit, in other words. HR would ask Ellen for everything on her side of the story (essentially the same stuff that's coming out in court now), and then draft up a brief which describes all the evidence (using the term "evidence" loosely here because this is just Ellen's side for now). HR would then take this file to the person who is allegedly discriminating against Ellen (I think it would be John Doerr in this case) and say, "I need your undivided attention on this, this is a serious matter" and then get John's side of the story. After that, each situation is different, but it's pretty obvious to me that in the RPX case, HR would say to John "Look, it appears that Ellen did much more work on this than Randy so you need to think about why he got the board seat over her." In most workplaces, at this point John would look over the documentation and realize that he probably DID discriminate against her and, most importantly, would be aghast at what he'd done. So then HR would work with both Ellen and John to develop a solution, which would probably include John apologizing to Ellen for undervaluing her contribution and a promise that he'll do better in the future. End Scene. So in this scenario, not only does HR prevent a lawsuit from happening but also the company gets to keep a valued employee who can keep adding to the bottom line while at the same time educating her superior to keep better track of the contributions of all employees regardless of their race, sex, or background.