HR comes of age - history of human resource management

HR comes of age - history of human resource management
Michael Losey
Workfoce management has become increasingly complex. The heritage and growth of the human resource management profession is closely linked to people's attitudes about work, the evolution of employment-related laws and sociological trends. The HR field today recognizes the dynamic relationship between strategy, people, technology and the processes that drive organizations. Although this dynamic relationship appears obvious now, the evolution of the profession has often been slow.
One could argue that the HR field dates back to the first working arrangements between master craftspeople and their apprentices. Before the industrial Revolution, working arrangements involved close relationships between mentors and apprentices dedicated to learning a particular trade. Apprentices were often required to live in the shop or home of the master craftsperson. If an apprentice was injured or sick, the master's family was responsible for restoring the young worker's health and welfare. Master and apprentice shared in good times and bad, in profit and in loss.
The usefulness of this age-old relationship came to an abrupt end with the advent of the Industrial Age. In one powerful stroke, the notion of work moved from guilds and home shops to steam-driven factories. The introduction of the assembly line brought a need for low-skilled employees capable of performing repetitive tasks. Management philosophy at the turn of the century was epitomized by Henry Ford, who often wondered why workers brought their heads to work when all he really needed was their hands and feet.
Assembly line production required that large numbers of people come together for work, but these workers were interchangeable and, to some extent, expendable, because few skills were required for most factory jobs. Employers' attentions focused on consumer demands, the speed at which new machines produced goods and the processes that drove production -- concerns that were sometimes placed well ahead of the needs of employees.
The personnel administration movement
By the late 1800s, people problems were a very real concern in the workplace. For the average blue-collar worker, most jobs were low-paying, monotonous and unsafe. Some industries experienced difficulty recruiting and retaining employees because of the poor working conditions workers were exposed to. As the means of production continued to shift from farmlands and guilds to city factories, concerns grew about wages, safety, child labor and 12-hour workdays. Workers began to band together in unions to protect their interests and improve living standards. Government stepped in to provide basic rights and protections for workers.
Forward-thinking employers recognized that productivity was connected to worker satisfaction and involvement and realized they could not meet production schedules with bands of disgruntled employees. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the personnel profession that grew out of concerns about employee absenteeism and high turnover attempted to solve worker problems with such basic personnel management functions as employee selection, training and compensation.
It's believed that the first personnel management department began at the National Cash Register Co. (NCR). NCR faced a major strike at the turn of the century but eventually defeated the union after a lockout in 1901. After this difficult union battle, company President John H. Patterson decided to improve worker relations by organizing a personnel department to handle grievances, discharges, safety and other employee issues. The department also kept track of pending legislation and court decisions and these first personnel managers provided training for supervisors on new laws and practices.
NCR was not alone in its efforts to address employee grievances. Other employers were looking for management solutions that would alleviate employee disenchantment. Many attempted to ease labor unrest by increasing wages. For example, Ford experienced employee turnover ratios of 380 percent in 1913; in 1914, the company doubled the daily salaries for line workers from $2.50 to $5, even though $2.50 was a fair wage at that time.
Although industrial giants were beginning to understand that they had to do more than just hire and fire if they were going to meet consumer demands for products, most of the objectives of early personnel professionals were one-sided. Business leaders still viewed the work itself as infinitely more important than the people doing it, and production rates remained the top concern. Because employers believed employees would accept more rigid standards if they received extra pay and benefits, most employer-sponsored business solutions were aimed at making employees more efficient. From this mind-set grew scientific management approaches based on the work of Frederick W. Taylor and other experts whose goal was to get people to perform as efficiently as machines.
Of course, such approaches did little to improve worker morale or improve working environments. To counter the growing strength of the labor movement, some employers hired strikebreakers or kept blacklists of union members. Others made workers sign "yellow-dog" contracts -- agreements that they would not join unions. Still others attempted to protect their interests by creating company unions to preempt the influence of outside union activities.
Government stepped up to help those who were less fortunate through reforms of work hours, new laws governing the work of children and workers' compensation laws aimed at protecting employees injured on the job. In Congress created the U.S. Department of Labor "to foster, promote and develop the welfare of working people, to improve their working conditions and to enhance their opportunities for profitable employment."
The Labor Department grew rapidly during World War I as the war effort became a national priority. By the war's end, the Labor Department -- through the War Labor Administration (WLA) -- had set numerous policies to ensure that wage, hour or working condition problems did not hinder the war effort and industrial growth. WLA initiatives were model programs but frequently fell short of business needs. They could not meet the challenges that would soon stop the industrial explosion in its tracks.
In 1929, the onset of the Great Depression drastically changed the rules of business. With profits dwindling, employers first eliminated voluntary welfare program, then jobs. The government led by President Franklin Roosevelt, provided some assistance by creating jobs ranging from road building to painting murals on government buildings through the Civil Works Administration and later the more extensive Works Progress Administration. New social programs, including old-age pensions, labor standards and minimum wages for some industries, were developed.
With dreams of the good life fading for most workers, unions established strong roots in many industries and gathered political clout with Congress. The Norris-LaGuardia Act changed the rules of the game in labor-management relations by making "yellow-dog" contracts unenforceable and severely restricting the use of federal court injunctions in labor disputes. Union organizations grew in power after passage of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in 1935, also known as the Wagner Act.
The NLRA signaled a change in the federal government's role in labor-management relations, giving employees the right to organize unions and bargain collectively, while prohibiting employers from engaging in certain unfair labor practices. The act also created the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which continues to establish procedures for conducting union organizing and election campaigns and has authority to investigate unfair labor practices.
As employers began to understand the need for professionals who could play a middle role between employees and employers, the personnel manager's role emerged. It was during this first movement that employers began to truly understand that employees were more than machines with interchangeable faces. The personnel managers of this period did not have all the answers, but the developing practices and concerns of the era set the stage for continuing study and investment in the role of effective human resource management.
Human relations movement
The field of human relations -- or industrial and personnel relations -- that emerged in the 1920s provided a new focus for the profession. In an effort to increase productivity, personnel programs expanded to include medical aid and sick benefits, vaccinations, holidays, housing allowances and other new benefits. New personnel roles emerged as unions began challenging the fairness and validity of Taylor's scientific management theories.
The human relations movement provided new insights derived from studies that linked improved productivity to management philosophies emphasizing employee communications, cooperation and involvement. This new thinking about employee cooperation grew from the works of Elton Mayo -- known as the Father of Human Relations -- and from the Hawthorne Studies, an important series of illumination experiments conducted between 1924 and 1932.
Conducted at the Hawthorne Works of AT&T's Western Electric Plant near Chicago, the Hawthorne Studies were the first to question Taylorism's behavioral assumptions. Mayo, who conducted the studies to explore how changes in working environments affected productivity, was surprised by the results.
Although the study began as an effort to quantify the levels of lighting and other physical conditions that would maximize employee productivity, Mayo and his researchers soon found a much greater link between employee productivity and the level of attention managers paid to employees and their behavior. The studies concluded that, in motivating workers, human factors were often more important than physical conditions. For the first time, productivity research put forth the controversial proposition that workers' feelings were important. Mayo's work propelled further developments in HR management.
The concept of employee motivation increased in importance in the 1940s. When World War II ended the nation's economic drought and brought full production and full employment to the industrial giants, labor was again in short supply. As men were called to serve their country, shortages emerged, and women and teens were called on to keep the engines of industry rolling. For the first time, people of color took jobs previously not open to them. Expanded job growth also meant expanded roles for the personnel manager -- recruiting, testing, training, mediating, and keeping an eye on employee morale and production efficiency.
As the 1940s moved forward, Mayo's work and real-world business experiences launched a greater understanding of the dynamics of work groups and the social needs of employees. Business leaders began to appreciate the production that resulted when managers acted less like taskmasters and more like good leaders, counselors and facilitators. Non-monetary rewards became an important supplement to monetary rewards for motivating employees. New theories on the benefits of improving the relationships between management and employees abounded.
But many Americans awoke to harsh realities after World War II. Returning war veterans were ill equipped to meet the technological demands of the new workplace. The federal government responded with measures such as the GI Bill of Rights, which granted university-level educational assistance to returning veterans and was instrumental in developing new leaders and a powerful new workforce for the United States.
After the war, the country was also rocked by severe inflation and labor unrest. After enduring wage freezes imposed during the war, unions sought to make up for the lost time. Union membership had grown from about 6 percent when the NLRA was passed to about 23 percent in 1947. Strikes became more frequent and union tactics in some cases more militant.
A strong anti-union sentiment emerged and against this backdrop Congress overrode President Truman's veto of the 1947 Labor-Management Relations Act, better known as the Taft-Hartley Act. The new law banned the use of "closed shops," which required workers to join t he union to be hired, and placed government in the role of mediating union and management disagreements. But as the turbulent 1940s came to an end, a new turbulence was brewing in the Far East. Once again, the country mobilized for war production with the outbreak of the Korean War.
Human resource movement
After the Korean War, a new class of college-educated managers emerged with a greater sense of social responsibility than their predecessors. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, social well-being coupled with social upheaval -- best exemplified by the struggle for desegregation -- changed the thinking of employees in the United States.
As the 1960s and 1970s unfolded, a more personable group of managers emerged, and their interests in people and feelings influenced all facets of business, including the growth of market research, communications and public relations. This group of managers emphasized the relationship between employers and employees, rather than scientific management. Programs to increase wages and fringe benefits continued to be developed. New studies linked greater productivity to management philosophies that encouraged worker ideas and initiatives.
The new laws of the Great Society sprouted from this social foundation -- laws that protected employees from unsafe jobs and from violations of basic civil rights. Personnel and human relations managers were now responsible for motivating people and helping their organizations navigate a maze of regulations, executive orders and court decisions.
As time progressed, the nature of work continued to change. A well-educated group of baby boomers became to take new theories to heart. Boomers placed human rights and ideas of self-fulfillment at the forefront of their workplace concerns. These people wanted more than an occupation; they wanted jobs that were challenging and interesting. Employees of this era began to view themselves as stakeholders in their companys' enterprises.
In contrast to the attitude of the early 1900s -- where workers were considered cogs in the industrial machine -- many of the highly skilled knowledge workers of today actually control the machines, carrying the power and ability to make decisions to satisfy customer needs. In looking for ways to increase productivity, baby boomers are also heavily influenced by psychology and other behavioral sciences. Dedicated to making work meaningful, enriching the work environment, communicating and imaging by objectives, this generation seeks to tie the goals of individuals with the goals of the organization. Most businesses have been happy to go along with the new programs, since their efforts are tied to in-creased productivity.
As bottom-line results improve and more competitive advantages are tied to human resource innovations, the power of human resource management has begun to extend beyond the domain of human resource departments. Organizations have recognized the importance of human resource considerations in long-range strategic planning. Today, the human resource professional is charged with optimizing employee skills, matching people to jobs and maximizing the potential of employees as valuable resources.
Poised for the future
Many challenges remain for the HR profession. Companies must to maintain ethical standards to match heightened social mores and the greater attention given to the ways they behave and communicate. The diverse composition of the workforce means employers must work to ensure that they reward effort, not prejudices against sex, race, age, national origin, religion or other global differences.
Many companies still have not made their human resource professionals key participants in strategic business decisions. And top management stiff resists sharing decision-making power with employees, who must be given such power if they are to add value to products and services.
While maintaining the special body of HR knowledge, professionals in human resource management must also be generalists who understand economics, politics, social and cultural trends, technological innovations, changing work values, skill shortages, government mandates in labor laws, affirmative action, health care management, privacy concerns, international trends, and myriad other issues. For HR professionals, the challenge of today's business environment is to understand and manage the important interaction of technology, work, flow, organizational strategies and, most important, people.
The human resource profession has come a long way since the early days of Henry Ford and other industrial giants who believed they needed little more than able bodies to keep production lines running. In our new age of technology and rapid product innovation, unleashing the minds and creative souls of tomorrow's workforce is the factor most likely to propel businesses and the HR profession into the future.
Michael R. Losey, SPHR, CAE, is president and chief executive officer of the Society for Human Resource Management.
COPYRIGHT 1998 Society for Human Resource ManagementCOPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

The 10 Cs of Branding

The 10 Cs of Brandingby William Arruda September 19, 2006
The benefits of having a strong brand are tremendous. Strong brands charge premium pricing; they thrive during economic downturns; they attract valuable employees, business partners, and customers; and they can extend into new business areas with ease. Every company, product, city, or even person can reap these benefits if they focus on building and maintaining their brands.
In a previous MarketingProfs article, I wrote about the "Three Cs of Branding." It was by far the most popular of all the articles I have written for the site—nearly 300,000 people have read it. The three Cs that I referenced in that article are among the most important and are also among the most challenging to implement; but there are some other Cs that are critical to branding as well.
When I deliver my workshop "You Can't Spell Brand without the Letter C," I actually cover the 10 Cs of successful branding. In building and nurturing a strong brand, you have a lot more to think about than these 10 Cs; but no brand is truly a strong brand if it doesn't pass the Ten C Test. So whether you're managing your company's brand or building your own personal brand, think about these 10 Cs:
1. Competent
All brands begin with competence. Although a rational brand attribute, it is the table stakes that gets you into the game. You aren't going to get too far with branding if your product or service cannot fulfill its promise. Just as people who cannot hold a note don't make it past the first round on Pop Idol, you can't build a brand around ineptitude. When IKEA first launched in Sweden, its furniture was well designed, but of poor quality. It did not have a solid brand. Then, after years of refinements, it started to produce much-higher quality products, still at affordable prices. Now, their kitchens are considered to be of very high quality while remaining inexpensive and fashionable.
Competence is the first C. If you don't have a solid product or service, you are wasting your efforts branding it.
2. Credible
Not only do your products and services need to be solid, you need to be believable in delivering them. You need to be true to your core values and deliver on them in everything you do.
Although it could certainly produce a couture collection of clothes, the Gap would not be credible in extending its line to compete with Valentino and Dior on the runways of Paris. Starbucks, on the other hand, is a credible partner for Krups with its espresso machines. Starbucks knows something about coffee, so this offering is believable.
3. Clear
Strong brands are clear about what they are and what they are not. They understand their unique promise of value—and this promise sets them apart from their competitors. It differentiates them and allows them to attract and build loyalty among a desirable set of consumers.
Volvo, for example, is clear about its commitment to safety and security. The brand is not about speedy sports cars, or small economy cars, or luxury cars. Its clarity separates it from many less successful competitors that are trying to be all things to all people.
4. Compelling
A strong brand is appropriate for—and interesting to—its target audience. It is relevant. It knows who to focus on and gets that audience passionate about what it has to offer.
Ritz Carlton does not go after young trendy professionals, just as W Hotels knows that its promise is less compelling to older, more conservative people. I once spoke with a retired Army officer on a plane about W Hotels. He was telling me about his experience. He said the elevator lighting was so dim he thought the hotel was trying to conserve energy, and he found all the people dressed in black, including the housekeeping staff, "depressing."
5. Consistent
In addition to being clear about who they are, strong brands are also consistent. They are always what they say they are. In everything they do, they bolster their brand attributes.
Madonna is the chameleon brand of entertainment. She reinvents herself with each CD that she produces. She didn't change for her first five CDs and then stay the same for the next two. She consistently changes.
And the one thing we can be sure of with regard to her upcoming CD is that it will be nothing like any of the others she has done before. Madonna's ability to change consistently throughout her career separates her from other entertainers, thereby strengthening her brand.
6. Constant
Strong brands are constant; they are always visible to their customers and prospects. They don't go into hiding.
For Coke, the world is the target market. That is why you can't make it through a day without being exposed to its bright red color or familiar script logo. Vending machines, people carrying a coke as they walk down the street, restaurant menus, product placement in TV shows and movies, billboards and print and TV advertisements all scream COKE.
Chances are, your brand's target market is a lot smaller than Coke's. And that is good news, making it easier (and a lot less expensive) for you to remain constantly visible to your target audience.
7. Confident
Confidence is attractive and it is an attribute of all strong brands. Strong brands are not wishy-washy. They make decisions with conviction and deal with the consequences. They have a vision and believe that the vision can become reality.
Marriott was confident in their decision to go no-smoking. They instituted the policy world-wide – taking a stand and attracting attention. Strong brands aren’t bashful. They are confident and that confidence permeates the entire organization.
8. Connected
A strong brand is part of various appropriate communities. This means having a network of partners, colleagues, and customers. It means developing affiliations and partnerships that reinforce your brand. It means working with your supply chain. It means having a corporate social responsibility program (or personal social responsibility program for personal brands) to connect to the appropriate causes. It means having a following of loyal brand ambassadors who become your extended sales force.
Apple computer is connected to all the right communities, and it has established emotional connections with its employees, customers, and partners. You need only speak with someone who has a Mac or an iPod to see the depth of the connection.
9. Committed
A strong brand is in it for the long haul. Branding is not a one-time event; it's not about fads. Strong brands are built over time and require steadfast commitment to ensure long-lasting success. The strongest brands in the world have either been around for a long time (Coke, GE) or they are planning to be here for a long time to come (Google, Amazon, Microsoft).
IBM has earned our trust through consistently delivering on its brand promise for decades. McDonalds has done the same.
Brand value builds over time through consistently living the brand promise. Strong brands plan to be here for the long term and make strategic decisions accordingly.
10. Current
Strong brands are based in today, with room to evolve for tomorrow. Although based in authenticity, there is an aspirational element to branding. Just as Starbucks has the vision of being the "third place" (home, office, Starbucks) and is working to turn that vision into reality, you too must focus your brand on the future.
You must remain relevant to your target audience and become relevant to new target audiences as the world demographics change. The only constant is change. Don't let your Brand be stuck in the past; ensure it remains relevant and compelling.
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Whether you are working on a personal branding campaign or you're focused on differentiating your company's brand from its competitors, you need to constantly ask yourself if your brand is demonstrating the 10 Cs of branding.