Taylor Swift may have sung "It's Me, Hi, I'm the Problem, It's Me," but in many organizations, HR has claimed that title – whether they want it or not. From accusations of creating bureaucracy instead of cutting through it, to being seen as the policy police rather than a people advocate, HR departments have long wrestled with a reputation problem. But is that reputation deserved? Are HR professionals truly the obstacle standing between a thriving company culture and its potential, or are they the misunderstood guardians of it? A few recent headlines have brought the debate into sharp focus.

In recent news, the founder and CEO of Bolt, Ryan Brelsow, an online checkout provider, terminated his entire HR team. He stated in a LinkedIn post, “I can confirm. We did get rid of our HR team. It needed to happen. Anyone who loves creating problems versus solving problems has no role at a startup.” Bolt has a revenue of $28 million with 100 employees. 

Another example comes from a 2005 article in Fast Company by Kenneth Hammands, the author stated that HR is hated because “HR seemed bureaucratic, powerless, and detached from business reality.”  That perception apparently hasn’t changed.  A December 2025 article in the California Management Review by Jean Pralong puts it plainly, “[T]he more enduring critique is that HR has been unable to think about work as an activity. Instead, it has focused on individuals — their competencies, motivations, or aptitudes — without grasping the lived reality of what employees actually do, the dilemmas they face, or the intelligence they deploy in practice.”

The perception seems to be that HR is in their own world, doing their transactional tasks, but does not understand the business or how employees work to achieve business objectives – accused of digging their heads in the administrative sandbox and not providing the real value organizations need, especially in the war for talent. 

And yet, HR is using analytics and emerging tools to drive meaningful impact across the organization. Labor costs represent the largest line item for most businesses, and HR sits at the center of managing that investment responsibly. However, as Jean Pralong writes:

“A 2019 study by Deloitte, for example, reported that less than half of employees considered their HR function as effective in shaping the future of work. The paradox is clear: HR has modernized its discourse, yet the critique that it is disconnected from reality has not disappeared.”

HR has never been short of critics. A quick scroll through any workplace forum will surface plenty of frustration aimed at the function. HR sits on the management side of the table, which makes it an easy target. Maintaining workplace culture, keeping the organization compliant, and navigating the full spectrum of human behavior at work is a thankless job that often goes unnoticed until something goes wrong. But Pralong points to something deeper than general frustration with policy enforcement. As he writes, employees don't resent HR simply because of bureaucracy or slow processes; they resent it because HR often fails to understand what their work actually entails.

HR is needed.  Funny enough, a recent lawsuit by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (the State’s equivalent to the EEOC) filed against Tesla in 2022 alleges that “Black and/or African American workers” at the factory were subjected to daily harassment. Managers used slurs, segregated employees and ignored racist graffiti. The lawsuit also claimed Tesla disciplined Black workers more harshly than other employees, engaged in pay discrimination, and retaliated against workers who complained. More importantly, the lawsuit points out that “[w]ith [an] under-staffed and inadequately trained human resources department, [Tesla] failed to take reasonable action in response to these complaints.”   

The Department did an investigation and found that “in 2016, before Tesla established its employee relations department, Tesla had only 33 human resources professionals and managers to serve 19,916 workers in California. That is a ratio of about one human resources officer to 604 workers. In 2020, that ratio rose to about one human resource member to 740 workers.”  In other words, HR was understaffed and that was the problem for bad managers. 

That said, the full picture is more complicated. Much of what gets blamed on HR may actually reflect something else: undertrained managers who never learned to lead, coaching conversations that never happened, and a function that was kept at arm's length precisely by the people who needed it most. Managers who distrust HR don't call HR. And when things go sideways, HR takes the blame anyway.

Bolt's high-profile HR overhaul is a case in point. Breslow didn't eliminate the function – he downsized it and rebranded the remainder as People Ops. The work didn't disappear. The credibility attached to it did.

Which is exactly why HR's next challenge is as much about positioning as it is about performance. HR is an investment center, not a cost center, but making that case requires winning over an audience that's already skeptical. That becomes exponentially harder as AI steps in to answer the questions employees and managers used to bring to HR directly. Add a CFO who's watching Tesla operate with a skeletal HR function and calling it efficient, and the pressure on HR to prove its worth has never been higher.

Source: HR Dive 5/28/28, HR Executive 5/22/26, California Management Review 12/9/25, Fast Company 8/1/05