Human resources is a high-risk, high-reward sector. While financially and professionally rewarding, a career in human resources demands you to perform as a manager and a legal expert.
Ignorance of the law, small oversights, and even honest mistakes can leave an organization vulnerable to detrimental lawsuits.
Often, the future of a company relies on skilled human resource personnel to recognize and mitigate risk factors early so teams can avoid legal violations before they happen.
With such high stakes, those with an HR-focused MBA are expected to know employment law — from local ordinances to state mandates and federal regulations. While it may seem like a task for a lawyer more than for an MBA grad, human resources is the last line of defense before lawyers get involved. It is a human resource manager’s understanding of employment law that saves the company from ever needing to hire a lawyer.
Mandriva, a French competitor of Microsoft Windows, learned this lesson the hard way. According to Business Insider, after 17 years of operation, the company was at “a point of profitability when employee lawsuits forced the company into bankruptcy.” There were certainly other factors that contributed to Mandriva’s decline, but once the company had to start laying off a few workers, legal issues with human resources locked the company into a downward spiral.
Often, the cause for lawsuits is not malice on an employer’s part, but instead ignorance of changing laws and best practices....
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