Ryan Breslow, the CEO of Bolt Financial, recently dismissed his entire human resources team, claiming they manufactured unnecessary problems.. This move aligns with a Policy Exchange report suggesting that bloated HR departments in Britain are costing companies billions annually.

Ryan Breslow's Bolt Financial purge and the £10 billion HR bill

The decision by Ryan Breslow to eliminate the HR function at Bolt Financial highlights a growing frustration with corporate bureaucracy. According to the source report, this action coincides with a study from the centre-right think tank Policy Exchange, which argues that HR departments have become over-encumbered. the Policy Exchange report claims that these departments are costing firms £10 billion a year while prioritizing corporate interests and "radical" equality, diversity, and inclusion policies over actual staff welfare.

This trend is reflected in the wider British labor market. Between 2011 and 2023,the number of people employed in human resource roles grew by 83 per cent. This explosion in staffing has led to a rise in six-figure senior salaries and a proliferation of training initiatives that critics argue distract employees from their core professional duties.

The Cabinet Office's 6 per cent HR workforce

Public sector bureaucracy is also under the microscope. A 2022 audit of the UK Cabinet Office revealed that the department employed approximately 700 HR staff out of a total workforce of 11,000. This means that 6 per cent of the Cabinet Office's total staff are dedicated to human resources.

The author of the audit suggests that this growth has shifted the focus of the Cabinet Office's HR teams toward maintaining "right" political positions rather than supporting employees. As the report says, this shift has fostered a "culture of fear," where government staff feel pressured to remain silent to avoid saying something that could be deemed politically incorrect.

Carl Borg-Neal's £500,000 tribunal win against Lloyds Bank

The tension between HR-mandated training and employee rights is exemplified by the case of Carl Borg-Neal.. After asking a question about the use of the N-word by Black people during a training session, Carl Borg-Neal was fired by Lloyds Bank. However, an employment tribunal later ruled that the question was asked without malice, awarding Carl Borg-Neal nearly £500,000 in damages.

Other corporate scandals further complicate the perceived role of HR.. At the tech firm Astronomer, Chief People Officer Kristin Cabot resigned following a romantic encounter with CEO Andy Byron at a Coldplay concert. Kristin Cabot subsequently claimed that Andy Byron misled her regarding his marital status, leaving her "unemployable" in the wake of the scandal.

Octopus Energy's gamble on a zero-HR model

While many firms expand their HR wings, Octopus Energy has taken the opposite approach by operating without an HR department entirely. Founder Greg Jackson has stated that he wants to prevent employees from "drowning" in bureaucracy , instead trusting the staff at Octopus Energy to resolve internal conflicts, including bullying, on their own.

This alternative model raises significant questions that the source report leaves unanswered. It remains unclear how Octopus Energy handles complex legal compliance or systemic harassment without a formal HR structure. Furthermore, while Policy Exchange claims HR is too focused on "radical" policies, the report provides no specific data to quantify how these policies negatively impact productivity compared to the costs of potential legal failures in a zero-HR environment.