HR Business Partners (HRBPs) often sit in the middle of the hardest founder decisions: performance, budgets, dismissals, and the daily friction between “move fast” and “do it right.” If you’ve ever dealt with HRBP vs founders conflict, wondered how to handle a toxic high performer, or tried to run a trust-based culture with weekly reporting to the CEO, this interview will feel familiar.
We spoke with Valeryia Krupitskaya, an HR Business Partner with 8+ years across Wellness, GameDev, and mobile development, about being the “C-level right hand” without becoming a blind executor—and about the real cost of toxic behavior, weak feedback loops, and delayed leadership decisions.
Key takeaways (1-minute read)
- Even in trust-based cultures, weekly reporting is essential. It’s about maintaining good practices, not micromanaging.
- HRBPs prove their value by being able to tell founders a firm “No” and repeating it until it’s understood.
- Most team bottlenecks come from broken feedback loops, not a lack of motivation.
- Toxicity is more harmful than incompetence because it spreads and damages the business.
- The toughest challenges are internal—you are responsible for implementation and must deal with the results.
HR & founders: where the partnership ends and “CEO execution” begins
1. As a C-level “right hand,” where’s the line between HR leadership and executing the CEO’s wishes? Have you ever had to tell a founder a hard “no” to protect the business?
The line is drawn by the scope of responsibility, which naturally expands as a specialist’s seniority and compensation grow. At entry level, HR often executes; they aren't expected to own end-to-end strategic decisions. But as your title and impact increase, your "buy-in" to the business context deepens. You stop just following orders and start justifying, challenging, or proposing alternatives.
I have definitely said "No." It’s rarely a one-time conversation. I’ve had to approach founders multiple times, refining my arguments and highlighting risks from different angles. Often, these were painful or radical changes that the leadership had been stalling on. In the end, they were implemented—sometimes a quarter or two later—but those "No's" saved the company from long-term damage.
HR system guide for founders: HR System Guide 2026: Definition, Features, Pricing + Checklist
The biggest bottleneck in people management: the feedback loop
2. Across Wellness, GameDev, and Outsource, what’s the most common people-management bottleneck you see?
Without a doubt: the feedback loop—or the lack thereof. The gap between management and employees regarding expectations is the root of almost every problem, whether it's performance, motivation, or discipline.
Often, people simply don’t understand what is required of them. Sometimes this is a business failure—the founders keep the vision in their heads and don't communicate it. Other times, it's a "convenient ignorance" from employees who use the lack of written requirements to avoid accountability. I’ve found that solving the most complex organizational crises usually starts with fixing where the communication broke down.
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Trust-based HR with weekly reporting
3. You promote trust-based leadership but do weekly results reporting. How do you build trust while keeping accountability tight?
They aren't mutually exclusive. OKRs and KPIs provide the framework—management needs to know where we are, how many resources we’ve burned, and if we’re hitting our milestones. That’s just professional hygiene.
The "trust-based approach" applies to situational autonomy. It’s the absence of micromanagement. Trust means that if I see a problem in my domain, I solve it without distracting the CEO for permission. I take the lead, and I take the responsibility. I report on the progress of strategic goals regularly, but I own the "how."
HR reporting & metrics: 3 HR Reports That Will Change How You Manage Your Team
HR budgets during a crisis: how to prove HR ROI
4. How do you sell HR budgets to founders during a crisis? What was the toughest "sell" you ever successfully defended?
Since 2019, it feels like we’ve been in a permanent deficit. You have to treat HR like marketing—show the ROI, the value, and how the investment pays for itself.
The hardest sell was a massive corporate retreat for a team that hadn't seen each other in person for 8 years. The founders had been living abroad for five years, and 60% of the team had never met them or each other in the flesh. I pitched it as a "culture reset" and a brainstorming engine. I compared the cost against our regular "small" entertainment spend and showed the percentage increase versus the potential value of team synergy. It worked. The synergy was so strong that even years later, members of that group still follow each other to new companies.
Risk management: what HR sees before the C-suite does
5. You’ve mentioned preventing over 10 major business risks. What’s one risk leadership missed that you caught?
I once dealt with a high-level manager who was a brilliant professional but a "boundary crosser." She had massive energy and began interfering in other autonomous units where she had no authority. She was stalling decisions by forcing teams to backtrack and re-justify choices they had made ten steps ago.
The leadership saw her "proactivity," but they didn't see the drag she was creating. I documented specific cases where her interference threw teams back by weeks. Through structured negotiations and very direct feedback, we re-channeled her energy back into her own unit. The relief across the company was immediate.
Toxic high performers: the real cost
6. In high-risk terminations, what’s riskier: firing a weak junior or a toxic senior who owns critical code?
Financially, a Junior is easier to replace. But from a systemic perspective, toxicity is the real killer. Toxicity spreads. It ruins the performance of everyone around that person, eventually hurting the unit economics of the entire business.
However, "toxic" doesn't always mean "fire immediately." Sometimes it’s just severe demotivation that can be fixed. You have to be part psychologist to find the root.
The hardest firing of my career was a very expensive C-level executive with a substance abuse problem. He was a "loud" personality with a history of great success, but he had burned out and become destructive. It was a delicate, painful exit because of how high he had climbed, but we managed to part ways peacefully with a fair compensation package and no public drama.
Evidence & benchmarks:
- Toxic / disrespectful behavior and productivity impact: Make Civility the Norm on Your Team (HBR)
- Replacement cost benchmark (up to ~150% of salary for salaried roles): SHRM teaching case PDF — Thompson Technology: controlling labor costs
- Turnover/replacement cost reference (SHRM overview citing replacement-cost research): Today’s Leave Practices Set Up Employees and Employers for Failure
In-house vs consulting: which is harder?
7. You’ve done both in-house work and consulting. Which is harder?
In-house, hands down. A consultant is like a "high-info ChatGPT"—you come in, give great advice, but you aren't responsible for the implementation.
The In-house Partner has to live with the consequences. You have to know the people, their psychotypes, the company's speed, and its "hidden" scars. It’s emotionally and energetically expensive, but that’s where the real results are made.
Blitz questions
- An underrated but effective HR tool? Direct, structured, and honest feedback.
- A healthy team in three words? Responsibility, boundaries, involvement.
- The decisive skill for an HR BP? A deep understanding of psychology.
- The one illusion you’d drop if you could go back 8 years? The “Robin Hood” illusion.
- The author/framework that shaped you most? Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
If you’re scaling from spreadsheets to a structured HR operating system, HarmonyHR’s guides can help you standardize processes without adding bureaucracy.
Start with an HRIS selection baseline and system scope clarity:
FAQ
What does an HR Business Partner do for founders?
An HRBP helps founders translate strategy into people systems: expectations, feedback loops, performance, hiring and exits, and “risk hygiene.” The value is not just advice — it’s implementation and governance.
How do you deal with HR vs founder conflict?
Start with shared business risk: define the downside of a decision, document patterns, and propose a workable alternative. The best HR pushback is specific, repeatable, and tied to outcomes.
What is the real cost of a toxic high performer?
A toxic high performer often reduces the output of the people around them, increases churn, and slows decision-making. The hidden cost is the performance drag across the whole unit — not just the salary of the toxic person.
Can you build trust with weekly reporting to a CEO?
Yes. Trust-based HR is not the absence of metrics. Weekly reporting provides clarity; trust is about autonomy over how results are achieved.
Is in-house HR harder than consulting?
Usually yes, because in-house HR owns implementation, relationships, and consequences — including the emotional cost of hard decisions.