My ethical dilemna

Human Resource professionals are faced with ethical dilemma's frequently. People think that HR is a straight forward job--all you have to do is abide by and enforce the rules. Not so--nothing is black and white. Most situations that surface are gray and all have extenuating circumstances. Recently, I was faced with a work issue that challenged my faith, my profession and my Code of Ethics as an HR person.



Situation: An employee I'll call Butch, was on medical leave for about 8 weeks. Butch was very strong, had tattoos on his head and neck, lifted weights all the time, partied hard and was in to beefing up his body. He was intimidating and most employees tried to avoid him although everyone agreed he was harmless and people just blew him off most of the time.



Being the one to approve his medical leave, I knew that he was absent because his parents had him committed to a mental hospital. He was very unstable and made some threats against his family. I had kept in contact with his father during this time who was very open about Butch's problems and sure that his son has been "healed" and ready to return to work.



A few days before he was to return to work from his leave, he showed up at work and told several co-workers that he was going to kill his supervisor, named some other employees names, and seemed very aggressive (more than usual) to his co-workers. He then went into the office and spoke to the receptionist in an incoherent manner--like he was speaking "in tongue". She was a little frightened by him. He left the property shortly thereafter. He called me several hours later to tell me he was returning to work the next week and was released from his doctor and seemed perfectly normal to me. I did not know at the time of my conversation with him that he had done these other things earlier that day.



Here were my options:

1) Ignore the issue--Butch is harmless. Technically, he wasn't on work time and probably didn't say much worse than many do on a Friday night in the bar. But, what if something happened?

2) Call the cops and let them investigate.

3) Call his father and tell him to have Butch re-committed--we don't want him back.

4) Call his doctor and explain what Butch did. Tell him we don't think he's ready to return to work.

5) Be a coward and call Butch and tell him we don't have work for him and lay him off. Don't tell him the real reason why so he can't come back in anger and kill me. In other words, fire Butch just to be rid of him.



Butch violated company policy because he made threats concerning a supervisor and co-worker. This was pretty clear cut. However, I still felt like I would be doing an un-Christian-like thing if I fired him. After all, Butch was ill. He needed treatment, not to lose his job.



Long story short, we called the police, they investigated, but he was never charged with anything. We ended up terminating him based on violating company policy of our workplace violence policy.


I am still uncertain if we did the right thing. On one hand, I was scared of what he could do...he had a lot of issues. I didn't want to deal with him. On the other hand, it didn't help his situation at all by losing a good job and now he didn't have insurance to continue treatment.



This man has a girlfriend and a small child and I don't want to be responsible if/when he snaps. I (acting as a steward of the Company) took away his greatest chance of getting treatment for his condition. I hope we did the right thing...