&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "'Over-staffed' HR pays no heed to employee interest, causing more harm, report finds")
Bolt Financials' Ryan Breslow fired his entire HR department, saying that they were creating problems that didn't exist. The firings were part of the 30 per cent layoffs as the company tried to rebuild following huge losses. The 31-year-old said the staff were idling, felt "a sense of entitlement and not even working hard". In 2021, Octopus Energy CEO Greg Jackson told BBC News that he had got rid of the entire centralised human resources operation. The Bolt case has triggered a debate about the larger role of HR at companies.
HR doesn't care about the interests of its staff, study states
According to the centre-right think tank Policy Exchange, HR has become bloated and over-encumbered. The body says that the HR is not interested in looking after the staff and is instead only focused on things like "radical" equality, diversity and inclusion policies while protecting the interests of the company. Basically, the employee is completely ignored by the "human resources" department that is costing the companies £10billion a year.
HR staff too high at most companies
The study authors further claim that companies are fixated on taking the "right" political positions, and the staff is scared to speak up for fear of saying the wrong thing. The report cited by Daily Mail states that the HR industry has witnessed an explosion between 2011 and 2023, growing by 83 per cent. They comprise roughly 1.6 per cent of the workforce, twice the EU average. The number is likely to be higher in government departments.
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The Cabinet Office in the UK had around 700 people in HR of the total 11,000 people working there in 2022. Critics point out that HR is bogging down employees who are entangled in things like equality training initiatives, pulling them away from their main role at the company.
HR is hurting employees and companies with useless trainings
An "unconscious bias" training cost the government £370,000 over five years between 2015 and 2020, and then it wasn't even found to be as effective. The so-called "emotional check-ins" that many companies have implemented have also been found to be useless, with former executive director Pamela Dow calling them "illuminating and depressing".
She wrote in The New Statesman that there is “concern that the size, remit and seniority of HR functions may be causing harm: to individuals at work, to the effectiveness of organisations, and to the economy.”
The famous Astronomer HR chief and CEO scandal
The infamous on-camera canoodling between Kristin Cabot, who was Astronomer HR chief at the time, and Andry Byron, the CEO, is one example of a situation where the HR itself has created the problem it should be handling. Both of them resigned. At Octopus, there is no HR process, and the managers sort the grievances of their team as they know them better than anyone else.
