50 Fun Facts About HR

Which 1938 law created the American right to a minimum wage?

The Fair Labor Standards Act set a 25-cent hourly floor in 1938 and also introduced time-and-a-half overtime and banned oppressive child labour.

After how many hours a week does that law require overtime pay?

Forty: hours beyond that in a work week earn time-and-a-half; the 1938 act started the threshold at 44 hours and stepped it down to 40 by 1940.

What federal minimum wage took effect in the US in July 2009?

$7.25 an hour, the last of three steps set by the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007; states may set a higher rate, and many have, so the federal floor rarely bites.

On which day is American Labor Day held?

The first Monday of September: Canada marks its Labour Day on the same day, and the long weekend has come to mark the unofficial end of American summer.

In which year did Labor Day become a federal holiday?

By then thirty states were already marking it officially.

Which two groups promoted the original American holiday for workers?

The Central Labor Union and Knights of Labor organised the first parade, which went through New York City on 5 September 1882.

Which federal agency, created in 1935, runs US union representation elections?

The National Labor Relations Board was created by the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, the Wagner Act, to run representation elections and police unfair labour practices.

Which Chicago event does May Day commemorate?

The Haymarket affair: the Second International chose 1 May in 1889 to mark the 1886 general strike for the eight-hour day that ended in the Haymarket Square bombing.

How much leave does the Family and Medical Leave Act guarantee?

12 unpaid work weeks in any 12-month period, for a new child, a seriously ill family member, or the employee's own serious illness, with the job protected on return.

Which president signed that leave law in February 1993?

Bill Clinton signed it on 5 February 1993, the first major bill he signed as president, barely a fortnight after taking office.

What happened to earlier versions of that leave bill?

They were vetoed twice: Congress passed versions in 1990 and 1992, and the president of the day struck down both before losing the 1992 election.

Which arm of the Labor Department administers that leave law?

The Wage and Hour Division, which also enforces the minimum wage and overtime rules, handles FMLA complaints; highly compensated 'key employees' face limits on reinstatement under it.

Which 2019 amendment gave government workers twelve weeks off on full pay for a new child?

The Federal Employee Paid Leave Act rode on the 2020 defence authorisation bill signed in December 2019, and applied to births and placements from October 2020.

Who designed the office cubicle?

Robert Propst, who ran Herman Miller's research arm, devised the system in the 1960s, and later deplored the cramped cubicle farms it spawned.

What name did that design carry when Herman Miller released it in the late 1960s?

Action Office II: the first version, Action Office I of 1964, sold poorly, so the redesign added the movable, fabric-covered panels that became the cubicle.

Why was that design originally seen as an improvement?

It gave more privacy than open desk rows: before it, most offices were bullpens of desks in one open room, and the designer's panels promised workers a space of their own.

Who won an award for the failed first version of that design, without crediting his colleague?

George Nelson, whose studio styled the failed 1964 original, accepted the design award for it; his colleague went back and designed the version that actually sold.

What does the Hawthorne effect describe?

People changing behaviour when observed: the effect took its name from 1920s productivity experiments at a Western Electric plant, where output rose whatever the researchers changed.

What were the original Hawthorne studies actually testing?

Lighting levels: the 1924–27 illumination studies found output rose whether the light was turned up or down, so brightness itself could not explain the gains.

Where was the factory that gave the effect its name?

Cicero, Illinois: Western Electric's Hawthorne Works sat just west of Chicago's city line, and the best-known experiments followed women assembling telephone relays.

Which Harvard professor took over the Hawthorne studies in 1928?

Elton Mayo, an Australian-born Harvard Business School professor, led the Hawthorne interviewing and bank-wiring studies from 1928 and wrote The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization in 1933.

Who is sometimes credited with writing the first résumé?

Leonardo da Vinci wrote a letter of about 1482 to Milan's ruler Ludovico Sforza listing his engineering and weapon designs, mentioning his painting only at the end.

From which language does the word 'résumé' come?

French: résumé is the past participle of résumer, 'to summarise', so the word literally means 'summed up'.

What is the standard document called in Europe and Asia?

A curriculum vitae, Latin for 'course of life': outside North America the term covers the short document Americans call a résumé, not just the long academic CV.

What does a reverse chronological résumé put first?

The most recent job goes first, working backwards; it is the default format because recruiters skim the top third of the page before deciding.

What distinguishes a structured job interview?

Every applicant gets the same questions, asked in the same order and scored against set criteria; unstructured interviews predict job performance far less reliably.

Who first coined the term 'human resource'?

John R. Commons, the labour economist, used 'human resource' in his 1893 book The Distribution of Wealth, decades before HR became a distinct profession.

Which two industrial-era thinkers laid the groundwork for the HR field?

Robert Owen and Charles Babbage both argued during the industrial revolution that a business could not survive without healthy, well-treated workers; Owen cut hours at his New Lanark mills.

What did Frederick Winslow Taylor call his approach to work efficiency?

Scientific management, often called Taylorism, broke jobs into timed tasks; Taylor's 1911 book The Principles of Scientific Management shaped early twentieth-century personnel practice.

What was published for the first time in 1922?

The Journal of Personnel Research began in 1922 as a joint effort by the National Research Council and the Engineering Foundation, an early sign of personnel work becoming a field of study.

Which 1970 statute governs hazards at work in the United States?

The Occupational Safety and Health Act, signed on 29 December 1970, created OSHA within the Labor Department to set and enforce workplace safety standards.

Which president signed that safety law?

Richard Nixon signed it on 29 December 1970; before that, federal protections for workplace safety were almost non-existent.

Why did many employers ignore hazards at work before that statute?

Replacing a worker cost less than safety measures: tort defences such as assumption of risk left injured workers with little recourse, so there was no financial pressure to improve.

Which naturalist is credited with putting wheels on his study chair?

Charles Darwin fitted the armchair in his Down House study with castors in the 1840s so he could wheel between his specimens faster, an accidental office-furniture pioneer.

Why was the swivel chair with castors adopted in offices?

To keep clerks seated and productive: a chair that swivelled and rolled let a clerk reach several places in a work area without standing, saving time and energy.

In which 1505 manuscript does a swivelling chair with castors appear?

The Codex Loffelholz: Martin Löffelholz, a Nuremberg patrician, drew a rotating chair on wheels in his 1505 manuscript of tools and machines, centuries before the office swivel chair.

What are the modern gas-lift office chair's supports called at floor level?

Feet, usually on castors: a five-pointed star base spreads the load over five feet, while the single load-bearing leg under the seat is the gas lift itself.

What did the moving assembly line approach become known as?

Fordism: the moving assembly line Ford introduced at Highland Park in 1913 cut Model T assembly from over twelve hours to about ninety minutes, and the name spread worldwide.

Which document usually accompanies a résumé to an employer?

A cover letter introduces the résumé and explains the applicant's interest; together with the application form, they are the first things a hiring manager sees.

In which year did the professional network LinkedIn launch?

2003: Reid Hoffman and his co-founders launched LinkedIn on 5 May that year, and the professional network became the standard online résumé before Microsoft bought it in 2016.

Which US school opened the world's first higher-ed institution for workplace studies in 1945?

Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations opened in 1945 as a New York statutory college, the first degree-granting school devoted to the study of the workplace.

Under what name did Britain's CIPD, one of the oldest HR associations, begin in 1913?

The Welfare Workers' Association was founded in York in 1913; after several renamings, including the Institute of Personnel Management from 1946, it became the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in 2000.

In which Virginia city is SHRM, the world's largest HR professional association, based?

Alexandria: the society, then called the American Society for Personnel Administration, moved there in 1984 from Berea, Ohio, and took the SHRM name in 1989.

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was created by which law?

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 created the commission under Title VII; it opened its doors on July 2, 1965, and can sue employers but cannot itself impose sanctions.

Who were the EEOC's very first complainants?

Female flight attendants, protesting weight limits, age caps and marriage bans, filed the first complaints; the agency initially ignored sex discrimination and one director called the provision 'a fluke... conceived out of wedlock'.

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act protects US workers from what age upward?

40: the 1967 act, signed by Lyndon B. Johnson, protects workers aged 40 and over, a ground that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act had not covered.

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

George H. W. Bush signed it on the White House lawn on July 26, 1990; his son George W. Bush signed the 2008 amendments, which took effect on January 1, 2009.

ERISA, passed in 1974, sets minimum federal standards for what?

Private-industry pension plans, and health plans too, come under ERISA's minimum standards; enforcement is split three ways between the Labor Department, the Treasury and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

What is 'onboarding' usually called outside American English?

Induction is the British and Commonwealth term; 'onboarding' is American management jargon coined in the 1970s for bringing newcomers up to speed.

Who is surveyed in a '360-degree feedback' performance appraisal?

Customers, supervisors and peers, along with subordinates and the employee's own self-rating, all contribute, giving a rounded view rather than the direct manager's alone.