Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow's raised controversy by axing HR during restructuring, saying it was only important during ‘peacetime’ – Canadian HR leaders disagree
When Ryan Breslow, chief executive of US fintech company Bolt, announced at Fortune's Workforce Innovation Summit in May 2026 that he had eliminated his company's entire HR department during a corporate crisis, he drew a clear line in the sand. HR, he argued, has its place — but only in peacetime.
“We're back in startup mode again, and those HR professionals have really important insights when you're in a peacetime and when you're at a larger company,”
Breslow said, adding that when a company’s restructuring and fighting for survival, they become a liability, reported Fortune. He went further on LinkedIn, writing that “HR is the wrong energy, format, and approach.”
But Breslow has it backwards, according to four Canadian HR leaders.
Crisis doesn't reduce the need for HR — it raises it
For Claudia Ursache, HR Director at aircraft maintenance company MTU Maintenance Canada in Delta, BC, the framing misreads what HR actually does and when it matters most. “I believe that it's one of the biggest misconceptions about human resources — that HR is primarily a people support function during periods of growth and stability,” says Ursache. “In reality, the opposite is often true because during restructuring, workforce reduction, labour disputes, organizational transformations, or economic uncertainty, HR becomes one of the most critical strategic partners to the executive team.”
Ursache draws on her own organization's experience: MTU Maintenance went from 550 employees to 80 after losing a major contract with Canadian Airlines in the early 2000s. According to Ursache, rather than issuing mass layoffs, the HR team brokered arrangements to place more than 200 employees in subsidiary operations of the parent company in China and Germany, preserving talent and morale. The company has since grown to 650 employees and last year celebrated $1 billion in Canadian revenue, she says, adding that it’s “because the people 20 years ago who were 20 or 30 years old, are still with us.”
“You rely on your people — that's the only thing you can rely on,” says Ursache. “If you have the trust that the management team and the people at that level have clear strategy and they know how to ride the crisis, and you are transparent and honest in explaining every moment what's happening with the business and what challenges the business has, people are staying with the organization.”
Nilsa Buehner, Director of HR at the Mississaugua Golf and Country Club in Mississauga, Ont., echoes that view. A well-prepared HR function is most essential precisely when organizations come under pressure, she says.
“HR is arguably more important during crisis, says Buehner. “In stable periods, HR builds the systems, the trust, the leadership, the capacity, and the policies — all the things that happen in the background, but during times of crisis, those systems are tested. A crisis doesn't reduce the need for HR. If anything, it elevates it.”
‘HR is like the dentist — no one likes them, but you need them’
Where the conversation gets more nuanced is in the question of accountability, according to Diane Slater, CHRO at Toronto-based Stephenson's Rental Services. Slater believes Breslow's frustration may reflect a genuine problem — but not the one he diagnosed.
“If your people aren't as useful to you in ‘wartime’ as they are in ‘peacetime,’ then you haven't let them into the room with you,” says Slater. “HR is like the dentist — no one likes them, but you need them, and if I only ever go to the dentist for a root canal because I couldn't be bothered going for even an annual cleaning for the last 20 years, and then I'm angry at the dentist — guess what, you brought that on yourself.”
For Slater, the Bolt story illustrates what happens when HR is treated as a transactional function rather than a strategic one. When CEOs only bring HR in to write offer letters and process terminations rather than involving them in decisions about talent gaps, succession, or organizational design, the function atrophies — and then gets blamed for the consequences, she says.
Kin Choi, Vice-President of People and Technology at Algonquin College of Applied Arts and Technology in Ottawa, agrees that HR must earn its place at the table — but says the profession's value during a restructuring depends entirely on how it operates. “If you're sitting there silently, not offering solutions, I can see why somebody like [Breslow] would be very frustrated,” says Choi. “You have to come prepared to say ‘Here's how it would have to work’ — there are trade-offs, there are different employment contracts, different ways of resourcing it, and different incentives — if you can be more creative as a business partner, you'll be invited to the table.”
Compliance functions also aren’t expendable under financial pressure for an organization, says Choi. “There are legislative requirements when you manage people — everything from employment standards to different employment codes to collective agreements to human rights — you can't operate your organization in a vacuum, you're part of a legal framework.”
Culture is a leadership failure, not an HR one
Breslow attributed Bolt's cultural dysfunction — what he called a “festering” sense of entitlement — in part to HR's presence, Fortune reported. Slater finds that framing telling. “Culture isn’t in what you tell people it is, it's in what you allow,” she says. “When a C suite delegates culture to HR, it's a form of laziness. Culture applies to everyone, including the people at the top.”
Buehner believes that it’s a misconception that HR is responsible for building an organization’s culture: “It’s a shared responsibility that all leaders hold in an organization HR doesn't have eyes on every part of the business,” she says.
When people feel heard, valued, and seen in the workplace, they reach their maximum potential, according to Ursache. “If people don't feel valued, they don't contribute,” she says. “So if this is the way [Breslow] thinks of people — that they weren't working hard — I believe it's his failure and his management team's failure, rather than a people failure.”
Choi believes that having a strong HR team helps you build the culture that an organization needs so people are supported and can be productive. “Who wants to work in a place where you're going to come in and you have to look over your shoulder and you're fearful because there's not an HR person you can turn to, and if you've got a bad boss, who do you turn to?” he says. “You're kind of declaring that people are secondary.”
Stripped-down HR — and what it costs
Bolt has replaced its HR department with what it calls a smaller people operations team focused on training and employee support, according to Fortune. The company has since faced rumours of compliance issues and delayed employee payments — exactly the kind of fallout that HR is designed to prevent, although Breslow told Fortune that the rumours weren’t true.
Buehner calls the stripped-back model a recipe for disaster. "There's a reason why HR practitioners spend years understanding legislation, the human rights code, and everything else involved in managing people,” she says. “When you have individuals not trained in those areas leading people matters, assisting managers, or making decisions, it’s a recipe for disaster — those individuals wouldn’t be equipped to solve the people-related issues that need more expertise.”
Slater points to the acquisition of Shoppers Drug Mart by Loblaws over a decade ago, when training staff were cut only to be called back months later. “You do need those people — who [Breslow] probably perceives as highly administrative — to create the infrastructure to allow people to be an employee,” says Slater. “HR is there to simplify the experience of being an employee, to give you back the time to do your job.”
For Canadian HR leaders looking to avoid being on the wrong side of this equation, Choi suggest that the mark of a strong HR leader is whether or not they are a trusted adviser to the C-suite. “Are they anticipating the needs of the organization for the future, the succession plans for the leadership, and the skill sets needed for tomorrow, not just today for?” he says. “If you're adding that type of value, I think you'll be at the table, but if you and your team are only coming in to say, ‘the Employment Standards Act prevents you from doing X, Y and Z,’ that's not a very positive conversation or a starting block for partnership —you have to be able to understand where the business is trying to get to and how can we support them in getting there?”
As AI-driven restructuring accelerates and organizations increasingly weigh workforce decisions against efficiency targets, that question is taking on new urgency. “Every crisis in every organization becomes a people challenge,” says Ursache. “Organizations don’t execute restructuring plans or recoveries — people do.”
