50 Fun Facts About HR

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

It also introduced time-and-a-half overtime and banned oppressive child labour.

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

The rate is time-and-a-half, and the same statute prohibits oppressive child labour.

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

It was the last step of a 2007 law; states are free to set a higher rate, and many have, which is why the federal floor rarely bites.

On which day is American Labor Day held?

Canada marks its Labour Day on the same day; most other countries use 1 May.

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 first parade went through New York City on 5 September 1882.

How many other countries mark International Workers' Day on 1 May instead?

That date was chosen to commemorate the American strike that led to the Haymarket affair in Chicago.

Which Chicago event does May Day commemorate?

The Second International picked the date to mark the general strike that led up to it.

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

It covers a new child, a seriously ill family member, or the employee's own serious illness.

Which president signed that leave law in February 1993?

His predecessor had vetoed a version of it twice before the 1992 election.

What happened to earlier versions of that leave bill?

George H. W. Bush blocked them before losing the 1992 election.

Which arm of the Labor Department administers that leave law?

Elected officials and highly compensated employees face exclusions or limits under it.

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

It came through the defence authorisation bill and applied from October 2020.

Who designed the office cubicle?

He built it for the furniture company Herman Miller and released it in 1967.

What name did that design carry when it was released in 1967?

The first version, Action Office I, was a commercial failure.

Why was that design originally seen as an improvement?

Before it, most offices were rows of desks in an open room with no separation at all.

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

Propst went back and designed the version that actually sold.

What does the Hawthorne effect describe?

It came out of lighting experiments at a Western Electric plant outside Chicago.

What were the original Hawthorne studies actually testing?

The conclusion that brighter light raised productivity turned out to be false.

Where was the factory that gave the effect its name?

The workers there made electrical relays for Western Electric.

In which year was the term 'Hawthorne effect' coined?

John R. P. French named it two decades after the studies themselves ended.

Who is sometimes credited with writing the first résumé?

It was really a letter of about 1482 to a prospective employer, Ludovico Sforza.

From which language does the word 'résumé' come?

It means, straightforwardly, to summarise.

What is the standard document called in Europe and Asia?

The international version is closer to a résumé than to the long academic CV used in American universities.

What does a reverse chronological résumé put first?

It is the default format precisely because recruiters read the top third and stop.

What distinguishes a structured job interview?

Unstructured interviews are informal conversations, and they predict performance far less reliably.

Who first coined the term 'human resource'?

The labour economist used it in 1893, decades before HR became a distinct profession.

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

Both argued that a business could not survive without healthy, well-treated workers.

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

It is often called Taylorism, and it shaped early twentieth-century personnel practice.

What was published for the first time in 1922?

It was a joint effort by the National Research Council and the Engineering Foundation.

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

Richard Nixon signed it on 29 December 1970.

Which president signed that safety law?

Before it, federal protections for workplace safety were almost non-existent.

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

Tort law gave injured workers very little recourse, so there was no financial pressure to improve.

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

He wanted to reach his specimens faster, which makes him an accidental office furniture pioneer.

Why was the swivel chair with castors adopted in offices?

Reaching several places in a work area without standing up saved time and energy.

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

A Nuremberg patrician illustrated it, four centuries before anyone worked in an office.

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

The single load-bearing leg under the seat is the gas lift itself.

What did the moving assembly line approach become known as by 1914?

Elaborately engineered manufacturing sequences were the point, and the name spread worldwide.

Which document usually accompanies a résumé to an employer?

Together with the application form, they are the first things a hiring manager sees.

How long did the résumé remain simply a description of a person?

Only in the early 1900s did they start carrying details like weight, height and marital status.

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

Its School of Industrial and Labor Relations arrived as the field was being formalised under the label 'industrial and labor relations'.

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

It changed names twice more before settling on Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in 2000.

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

It moved there in 1984 from Berea, Ohio, and now counts nearly 340,000 members in 180 countries.

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

The commission opened its doors on July 2, 1965, and can sue employers but cannot itself impose sanctions.

Who were the EEOC's very first complainants?

The agency initially ignored sex-discrimination complaints; one director called the prohibition 'a fluke... conceived out of wedlock'.

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

Lyndon B. Johnson signed it in 1967 to cover ground that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act had not explicitly addressed.

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

His son George W. Bush signed the amendments of 2008, which took effect on January 1, 2009.

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

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?

The American term is management jargon coined in the 1970s; up to a quarter of US workers are newcomers going through it at any time.

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

Research suggests the source of the feedback, manager or peer, makes little difference to how employees change their behaviour afterwards.