“Fire your entire HR department.”
Wait… what?
That was essentially the message Ryan Breslow, CEO of Bolt, delivered recently when he announced he had eliminated the company’s entire HR team because they were allegedly “creating problems out of thin air.” According to Breslow, once HR was gone, the problems disappeared too. He also suggested that because Bolt operates remotely, HR simply wasn’t necessary.
The internet, unsurprisingly, exploded. He didn’t just criticize HR but also tapped into a frustration that has been building in workplaces for years. Employees are exhausted, leaders are frustrated, trust is low, bureaucracy feels high, and somewhere along the way, HR became the face of all of it.
However, as someone who works with organizations to create positive work cultures, I can say that people are looking at the wrong problem entirely. Because if your company went from an $11 billion valuation to roughly $300 million, I’d argue that’s not an HR problem at all.
Reasons Eliminating HR Won’t Fix Workplace Dysfunction
Here are five things Breslow, and frankly a lot of organizations, get wrong about HR.
1. HR Is the Scapegoat for Leadership Failures
The reason Breslow received so much support is because many people have had genuinely frustrating experiences with HR. (Just look at the comments section on my Instagram posts. People constantly telling me the workplace problems I discuss will never change because HR is awful.)
Employees often feel like:
- HR protects the company instead of people
- Simple issues become formalized unnecessarily
- Managers avoid direct conversations
- Workplace culture has become overly performative
At the same time, many leaders feel buried under process, approvals, training, investigations, and bureaucracy.
In many organizations, employees feel like they are constantly navigating politics, unclear expectations, and communication breakdowns. Leaders feel afraid to say the wrong thing and the managers hesitate to address performance directly.
And people assume HR created all of those problems. But most of the time, HR becomes the container for problems leadership failed to address early enough – problems HR had been telling HR about for years.
Think about it this way: healthy organizations have leaders who know how to lead, because the organization taught them how through setting clear expectations, training, and mentorship. Managers communicate directly, accountability is clear, and conflict gets handled early and respectfully.
But when trust starts breaking down, organizations compensate by adding more policy, more oversight, more procedures, and more escalation systems. And everyone ends up asking HR for help.
No help? HR’s fault, right? Actually, HR can only solve the problems they’ve been given permission and budget to solve.
2. Remote Work Doesn’t Eliminate People Problems
Breslow suggested remote companies don’t experience the same level of workplace issues. Anyone who has led remote teams knows that’s simply not true.
In fact, Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace research found that fully remote employees report higher levels of loneliness than on-site workers, which is 25% versus 16%.
Remote environments struggle with (even more so than onsite environments):
- communication breakdowns
- conflict avoidance
- unclear expectations
- performance management
- burnout
- trust issues
- leadership inconsistency
In many cases, remote work actually amplifies those challenges because leaders have fewer opportunities to repair relationships informally. People problems don’t disappear when people are online. They just show up differently.
3. Employees Aren’t Actually Asking for Less Culture
I literally just got off the phone with a potential client who is spending $10,000 on two social events for their workforce this year. But the HR manager is fighting for budget to get a toxic leader coaching, and manager training for all people leaders.
But that’s okay, the happy hour will have a fantastic impact on culture, right? Wrong.
For years, many companies invested more energy into branding their culture than actually building a healthy one.
Employees noticed.
- They noticed when organizations talked endlessly about values while tolerating toxic behavior behind the scenes.
- They noticed leaders praising psychological safety while punishing honest feedback.
- They noticed culture becoming a marketing message instead of a lived experience.
That disconnect created massive cynicism. So when Breslow publicly rejected HR, many people interpreted it as rejecting performative corporate culture altogether.
But employees aren’t asking for less work on culture. They’re asking for less dysfunction. And that, my friends, comes from the top, not HR.
4. Responsibilities Don’t Disappear Just Because HR Does
Even if you eliminate HR, someone still has to manage:
- Organizational risk
- Compliance
- Benefits and payroll
- Employee conflict
- Communication
- Complaints
- Training
- Hiring and onboarding
Those responsibilities don’t evaporate. They simply fall onto leaders who are probably already overwhelmed and unprepared to handle them effectively.
5. Leadership-HR Misalignment
This controversy highlights something I see constantly in organizations: Many executives still misunderstand the value HR is supposed to bring to an organization. They view HR primarily as compliance, investigations, policies, and paperwork. But that’s only one piece of the role.
Good HR is strategic, builds the organization, and helps leaders navigate growth, turnover, restructuring, conflict, accountability, and culture before those issues spiral into organizational instability.
So when a company is declining, losing talent, experiencing layoffs, or struggling operationally, leadership should be leaning into strategic HR, not dismissing it entirely.
Now, to be fair, there are absolutely HR departments that fail to operate strategically. Some become overly bureaucratic, some lose alignment with business realities, and some focus so heavily on process that they stop helping leaders solve actual organizational problems.
If that happened at Bolt, then yes, that’s a problem. And HR leadership should own their part in that. But removing HR altogether doesn’t solve organizational dysfunction. It usually just removes the people responsible for helping manage it.
What Companies Should Learn From This
The real lesson here isn’t that HR is unnecessary. It’s that organizations function best when leadership, systems, and individuals are fully aligned.
When executives treat HR as nothing more than policy enforcement and paperwork, the organization loses one of its most important strategic functions. At the same time, HR loses credibility when it becomes disconnected from the realities leaders and employees are facing day to day.
Ready to Build a Healthier, More Strategic Workplace?
Right now a lot of organizations are dealing with the same challenges. The solution isn’t to get rid of HR. It’s developing a healthier organization by empowering HR to take that on.
That’s exactly why we’re offering our Strategic HR Bundle as a free download. It’s designed for organizations that want HR to function as a true strategic business partner instead of just a compliance function.
Whether your organization is experiencing turnover, leadership tension, employee conflict, culture fatigue, or rapid organizational change, our team can help you strengthen workplace culture, improve communication, reduce conflict, and better align your people strategy with your business goals.
To learn more, simply respond to this email to schedule your free culture consultation with one of our workplace culture experts.
