Bolt CEO’s HR cuts renew debate over people teams
Ryan Breslow said Bolt’s HR function was creating problems, while a Fortune commentary argued the issue was how such teams are designed.
By Sofia Marchetti · World Affairs Correspondent
3 min read
Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow’s decision to eliminate the company’s people function has drawn fresh scrutiny over what HR teams are supposed to do inside fast-moving companies. Breslow has said the team was creating workplace problems instead of solving them, while a Fortune commentary argued that the deeper issue is how CEOs define and use those functions.
Speaking at the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit, Breslow said Bolt’s people function had been “creating problems that didn’t exist,” according to Fortune. He told Fortune editorial director Kristin Stoller that the team was manufacturing issues rather than addressing real ones, and that those issues disappeared after the team was removed.
The Fortune commentary said Breslow identified a real pattern in some HR departments: teams that are reactive, process-heavy and better at recording problems than fixing them. But it argued that the failure often begins with company leaders who build HR as a compliance operation and then fault it for acting like one.
People operations after HR
According to the commentary, Breslow has also acknowledged that Bolt still needed a people operations team after cutting HR. That team would handle required training and act as a resource for employees.
On LinkedIn, Breslow argued that “HR is the wrong energy, format, and approach” and said People Ops should empower managers, speed up decisions and keep the company moving quickly, according to the Fortune commentary. The commentary said the term HR may be dated, but it argued that a new label does not change the work unless leadership changes the team’s authority and goals.
The piece framed the difference as one between compliance-focused HR and strategic people work. It said a stronger people function should track companywide patterns, such as changes in labor markets, talent gaps, management quality and retention risks, rather than focus only on turnover rates and complaints after problems have already surfaced.
Data-driven people teams
The commentary pointed to Google’s People Operations work as an example of a more strategic model. Through Project Oxygen, Google used employee and performance data to test assumptions about what made managers effective, according to Google’s Re:Work materials cited in the commentary.
Google’s findings showed that coaching, communication and people leadership mattered more than technical expertise for management effectiveness, according to the cited materials. The company then redesigned manager development around those findings and measured the results, the commentary said.
The argument also drew on forecasts about automation in HR. Gartner projects that by 2030, half of current HR activities will be automated or handled by AI agents, according to the commentary. The Josh Bersin Company projects HR teams could shrink by 30% to 50% by the end of the decade, while strategic work could rise from about 30% of HR activity to as much as 75%.
The commentary said those forecasts do not make people teams obsolete. Instead, it argued that AI could take on administrative, transactional and compliance-tracking work, leaving human HR staff to focus on talent strategy and organizational health.
The Fortune commentary concluded that companies should not treat the question as whether HR should exist. It said the more important issue is whether leaders have given people teams the mandate, resources and authority to solve the business problems assigned to them.
This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.