49 Fun Facts About Human Resources

Which 1938 US law created the federal minimum wage and time-and-a-half overtime after 40 hours?

The Fair Labor Standards Act, signed by Franklin Roosevelt in June 1938, is often called the last major New Deal law; it also banned 'oppressive child labor'.

What was the first federal minimum wage set in 1938?

25 cents an hour was the 1938 floor; the act's own schedule raised it to 30 cents in 1939 and 40 cents by 1945.

What hourly federal minimum wage took effect in July 2009?

$7.25 took effect on July 24, 2009, the final step of the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, which raised the rate in three annual steps.

How many weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave does the FMLA guarantee eligible employees?

12 weeks of unpaid leave per year is the FMLA guarantee; employees need 12 months of service, 1,250 hours worked and an employer with 50-plus staff within 75 miles.

Which president signed the Family and Medical Leave Act into law in February 1993?

Bill Clinton signed it on February 5, 1993, the first major bill of his presidency; his predecessor had twice vetoed similar measures.

Which president signed the Occupational Safety and Health Act on December 29, 1970?

Richard Nixon signed it in December 1970; the act created both OSHA, the enforcement agency, and NIOSH, the research institute.

Which section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans employment discrimination?

Title VII bars employers from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, and took effect in July 1965.

Which federal agency, established in July 1965, enforces workplace anti-discrimination laws?

EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, opened on July 2, 1965; its commissioners can bring a 'commissioner's charge' even without a complainant.

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act protects workers starting at what age?

40 and older is the protected class under the 1967 act; 1986 amendments removed the upper age limit, barring mandatory retirement in most sectors.

Which president signed the Equal Pay Act on June 10, 1963?

John F. Kennedy signed it as part of his New Frontier program; it amended the 1938 wage-and-hour law to require equal pay for equal work regardless of sex.

Which president signed the Americans with Disabilities Act on July 26, 1990?

George H. W. Bush signed the ADA on the White House lawn on July 26, 1990; the act requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for disabled workers.

Under the ADA, employers with at least how many employees are covered?

15 or more employees triggers ADA coverage, the same threshold as the 1964 civil-rights employment provisions; the ADEA uses 20.

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 is better known by what name?

The Wagner Act, after its sponsor Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York, guaranteed private-sector workers the right to organize and created the NLRB.

The 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which curbed union power, became law over which president's veto?

Harry Truman vetoed it in June 1947, but enough congressional Democrats joined Republicans to override him within days.

Which automaker's 1963 South Bend plant closure gave momentum to the 1974 pension law ERISA?

Studebaker shut its South Bend plant in December 1963 and its underfunded pension plan collapsed, leaving thousands of workers with little or nothing; the scandal drove the 1974 ERISA reforms.

What does COBRA, the law letting departing employees keep group health coverage, stand for?

Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985: the health-continuation rules were one title of a sprawling budget bill signed by Ronald Reagan in April 1986.

How much notice of a mass layoff does the WARN Act require from employers with 100+ workers?

60 days' written notice is required before a plant closing or mass layoff; it must also go to the union, the local chief elected official and the state's dislocated-worker unit.

USERRA, signed in 1994, protects the civilian jobs of which group?

Military service members, including reservists and National Guard members, are guaranteed reemployment in their civilian jobs after service under the 1994 act.

GINA, enacted in 2008, prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of what?

Genetic information, including family medical history, cannot be used in hiring or insurance decisions under GINA, which passed the Senate 95-0 in 2008.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was the first bill signed by which president?

Barack Obama signed it on January 29, 2009; it resets the 180-day clock for equal-pay claims with every discriminatory paycheck, reversing the 2007 Ledbetter v. Goodyear ruling.

Which document must every US employer complete to verify a new hire's identity and work authorization?

Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, was mandated by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 and must be completed within three business days of hire.

Which is the only US state to have modified at-will employment by statute?

Montana's 1987 Wrongful Discharge from Employment Act requires good cause for firing once a probationary period ends, making it the lone statutory exception to at-will employment.

The at-will employment doctrine is usually traced to an 1877 treatise by which author?

Horace Gray Wood's 1877 treatise Master and Servant asserted that indefinite hiring is presumed at-will, a presumption later called 'Wood's rule'.

In April 2024, which US agency issued a rule banning non-compete agreements nationwide?

The Federal Trade Commission voted 3-2 to issue the rule on April 23, 2024; English courts had refused to enforce non-competes as far back as Dyer's Case in 1414.

Who wrote The Principles of Scientific Management, voted the 20th century's most influential management book?

Frederick W. Taylor published it in 1911, drawing on time-and-motion studies he began at Midvale Steel and continued at Bethlehem Steel from 1898.

The Hawthorne studies of the 1920s were conducted at a plant belonging to which company?

Western Electric's Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois, made telephone equipment and relays; workers seemed to get more productive with every lighting change.

Which Harvard professor's Hawthorne studies work founded the human relations movement?

Elton Mayo, an Australian-born psychologist, joined Harvard Business School in 1926 and led the interviewing phase of the Hawthorne studies from 1928.

In what year did Abraham Maslow publish "A Theory of Human Motivation"?

1943, in Psychological Review; Maslow never drew the famous pyramid himself, which appeared in later textbooks and consultants' diagrams.

In Herzberg's two-factor theory, what are the conditions that merely prevent dissatisfaction called?

Salary and safe conditions are hygiene factors: their absence upsets people, but their presence does not motivate.

Who developed Theory X and Theory Y, the contrasting models of how managers view workers?

Douglas McGregor set out Theory X and Theory Y in his 1960 book The Human Side of Enterprise, written at MIT's Sloan School and building on Maslow.

Peter Drucker's 1954 book that introduced MBO, or managing by objectives, was titled what?

The Practice of Management (1954) laid out management by objectives; Drucker went on to coin 'knowledge worker' in his 1959 book Landmarks of Tomorrow.

Which economist first used the term "human resource", in his 1893 book The Distribution of Wealth?

John R. Commons used 'human resource' in passing in The Distribution of Wealth; the modern sense dates to a 1958 report by E. Wight Bakke.

Which university opened the first School of Industrial and Labor Relations in 1945?

Cornell's ILR School, in Ithaca, New York, opened in 1945 as a state-supported college within the university and was the first of its kind.

SHRM, the US-based professional HR body, was founded in 1948 under what name?

American Society for Personnel Administration was the original name; the group adopted the SHRM name, Society for Human Resource Management, in 1989.

In which Virginia city is SHRM headquartered?

Alexandria has been SHRM's home since the association moved there from Berea, Ohio, in 1984.

The CIPD, the UK's professional HR body, was founded in 1913 under what name?

Welfare Workers' Association was the 1913 name, chosen at a founding meeting in York; the body became the Institute of Personnel Management in 1946 and the CIPD in 2000.

How many personality types does the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator sort people into?

16 types come from four dichotomies, such as introversion-extraversion; Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Myers built the indicator during World War II.

Which Swiss psychiatrist's 1921 book inspired the Myers-Briggs test?

Carl Jung's Psychological Types (1921) supplied the introversion-extraversion and thinking-feeling ideas that Briggs and Myers turned into the indicator.

The nine-box grid used in talent reviews plots performance against what?

Potential is the second axis: the nine-box grid scores each employee on performance and potential, placing 'high-high' stars in the top-right box for succession planning.

Input gathered on an employee from peers, subordinates, supervisors and even customers is known as what?

360-degree feedback gathers ratings from all around an employee, not only from above; one of the earliest surveys of this kind ran at Esso Research and Engineering in the 1950s.

According to the Peter principle, every employee in a hierarchy tends to rise to what?

Their level of incompetence: each promotion rewards competence until the employee reaches a job they cannot do; Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull meant the 1969 book as satire.

Which HR thinker's 1997 work is credited with the "HR business partner" model?

Dave Ulrich's 1997 book Human Resource Champions proposed the model, splitting HR into shared services, centers of expertise and business partners.

Who founded LinkedIn, launched in May 2003?

Reid Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn in late 2002 and launched it in May 2003; Microsoft bought the network in 2016 for $26.2 billion, its largest acquisition at the time.

HR software giant Workday was founded in 2005 by executives from which company after Oracle acquired it?

PeopleSoft founder David Duffield and executive Aneel Bhusri started Workday in 2005, months after Oracle completed its hostile takeover of PeopleSoft; the product launched in 2006.

Which Supreme Court ruling that pregnancy bias was not sex discrimination led to the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act?

General Electric v. Gilbert (1976) upheld GE's exclusion of pregnancy from its disability plan; Congress answered with the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act.

Which HR representative on The Office is portrayed as a nag for reciting company policies?

Toby Flenderson, played by Paul Lieberstein, is Dunder Mifflin Scranton's HR rep and the constant target of Michael Scott's loathing.

What daily wage did Ford introduce for its line workers in January 1914?

$5 a day, for an eight-hour shift, roughly doubled the previous rate; in 1913 the company had suffered a turnover rate of about 380 percent.

In the comic strip Dilbert, which character is the 'evil director of human resources'?

Catbert, the 'evil director of human resources', delights in downsizing and absurd policies; Dogbert is the scheming consultant and Ratbert the naive lab rat.

Which company is credited with the first personnel management department, around 1900?

National Cash Register owner John Henry Patterson created it to handle grievances, discharges and safety after a series of strikes and lockouts.