History of Human Resource Management

They say that communication is the oldest existential phenomenon on earth. Well, if that's the case then human resource management would get the second place in the sibling hierarchy. In spite of being added as a subject in management courses fairly late, HRM has been a concept that was utilized ever since human beings started following an organized way of life. So shall we start digging up the history of human resource management?

Some of human resource management's vital principles were used in prehistoric times. Like, mechanisms being developed for selecting tribal leaders. Knowledge was recorded and passed on to the next generation about safety, health, hunting, and gathering. 1000 B.C to 2000 B.C saw the development of more advanced HR functions. The Chinese are known to be the first to use employee screening techniques, way back in 1115 B.C. And turns out it was not Donald Trump who started "the apprentice" system. They were the Greek and Babylonian civilizations, ages before the medieval times.

HRM has seen a lot of nick naming in its age. Since it was recognized as a separate and important function, it has been called "personnel relations" then it evolved to "industrial relations", then "employee relations" and then, finally, to "human resources". I strongly believe, that human resources is the most apt name for it. It, quintessentially, proves the importance of the human beings working in the organization.

With the Industrial Revolution, came the conversion of the US economy from agriculture-based to industry-based. This led them to require an extremely well-organized structure. Further, this led them to recruit a lot of people. More so, the industrial revolution brought in maddening amounts of immigration. Again, to create employment for all the immigrants, recruitment and management of the recruited individuals gained vitality. As such, there was a blaring need for Human Resource Management.

Early human resource management, in general, followed a social welfare approach. It aimed at helping immigrants in the process of adjusting to their jobs and to an "American" life. The main aim behind these programs was to assist immigrants in learning English and acquiring housing and medical care. Also, these techniques used to promote supervisory training to ensure an increase in productivity.

With the advent of "labor unions" in the 1790's, the power in the hands of the employees multiplied considerably and increased at a rapid pace by the 1800s and furthermore in the 1900s. This led to the HR department being more capable of politics and diplomacy. The two feats that were quintessential to the importance of HR were; the fact that it was the HR department that got the management and the labor unions to come on common grounds. They basically worked on getting the management to see things from the labor perspective and grant them medical and educational benefits. The other would be Frederick W. Taylor's (1856-1915) Scientific Management. This book had tremendous impact on attaining better productivity from low-level production workers.

B.F. Goodrich Company were the pioneers in designing a corporate employee department to address the concerns of the employees in 1900. National Cash Register followed suit in 1902 by forming a separate department to handle employee grievances, record keeping, wage management and other employee-related functions. Personnel Managers started seeing more sunshine since the Wagner's Act (aka National Labor Relations Act) in 1935. There was a shift in focus from worker's efficiency to efficiency through work satisfaction, thanks to the Hawthorne studies around the 1930s to 1940s.

Between the 1960s and 1970s, the HRM movement gained further momentum due to the passing of several acts like the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), and the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. Now, the HR department was the apple of the corporates' eyes because, the corporates placed a lot of importance on human resource management to avoid plausible law suit.

So by the end of the 1970s, HRM had taken over the world! Almost all big and medium scale industries had a department to manage their recruitment, employee relations, record-keeping, salaries and wages, etc. Towards the 1980s, the importance of HR continued to intumesce for several reasons like increase in skilled labor, training, regulation compliance, dismissal, etc. The HR managers were the ones who did the hiring and the firing.

In today's date, HR has the same importance as the other departments, in some corporates, it has more. With the constant increase in education, technology and frequent fluctuations in economic status and structures, I believe, HR is the oldest, most mature and yet, the most efficient of all management styles.