Human Resources Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
99 free Human Resources trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Human resources touches every job in the country, but few people outside the department know where its rules and rituals came from. This human resources trivia quiz covers the landmark US employment laws HR teams live by: the Fair Labor Standards Act and the first minimum wage, Title VII and the EEOC, the ADEA, the ADA, FMLA, OSHA, ERISA, COBRA, the WARN Act, USERRA, GINA, the Lilly Ledbetter Act, Form I-9 and the at-will doctrine. It also covers the people and ideas behind modern people management: Robert Owen and the eight-hour day, Frederick Taylor and scientific management, Elton Mayo and the Hawthorne studies, Maslow's hierarchy, Herzberg's two factors, McGregor's Theory X and Y, Peter Drucker, Dave Ulrich's business partner model and the Peter principle, plus SHRM, the CIPD, the Myers-Briggs test, 360-degree feedback, applicant tracking systems, LinkedIn and Workday, and the origins of words like onboarding. The 99 questions run from easy to genuinely hard, and every answer was checked against the statute or the documented history, so it works for an HR team meeting icebreaker, an SHRM chapter night or a study session for a certification exam.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1938 US law created the federal minimum wage and time-and-a-half overtime after 40 hours?
Fair Labor Standards Act
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'.
Q 02What was the first federal minimum wage set in 1938?
25 cents an hour
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.
Q 03What hourly federal minimum wage took effect in July 2009?
$7.25
$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.
Q 04How many weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave does the FMLA guarantee eligible employees?
12
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.
Q 05Which president signed the Family and Medical Leave Act into law in February 1993?
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton signed it on February 5, 1993, the first major bill of his presidency; his predecessor had twice vetoed similar measures.
Q 06Which president signed the Occupational Safety and Health Act on December 29, 1970?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon signed it in December 1970; the act created both OSHA, the enforcement agency, and NIOSH, the research institute.
Q 07Which section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans employment discrimination?
Title VII
Title VII bars employers from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, and took effect in July 1965.
Q 08Which federal agency, established in July 1965, enforces workplace anti-discrimination laws?
EEOC
EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, opened on July 2, 1965; its commissioners can bring a 'commissioner's charge' even without a complainant.
Q 09The Age Discrimination in Employment Act protects workers starting at what age?
40
40 and older is the protected class under the 1967 act; 1986 amendments removed the upper age limit, barring mandatory retirement in most sectors.
Q 10Which president signed the Equal Pay Act on June 10, 1963?
John F. Kennedy
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.
Q 11Which president signed the Americans with Disabilities Act on July 26, 1990?
George H. W. Bush
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.
Q 12Under the ADA, employers with at least how many employees are covered?
15
15 or more employees triggers ADA coverage, the same threshold as the 1964 civil-rights employment provisions; the ADEA uses 20.
Q 13The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 is better known by what name?
The Wagner Act
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.
Q 21Which document must every US employer complete to verify a new hire's identity and work authorization?
Form I-9
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.
Q 22Which is the only US state to have modified at-will employment by statute?
Montana
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.
Q 23The at-will employment doctrine is usually traced to an 1877 treatise by which author?
Horace Gray Wood
Q 14The 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which curbed union power, became law over which president's veto?
Harry Truman
Harry Truman vetoed it in June 1947, but enough congressional Democrats joined Republicans to override him within days.
Q 15Which automaker's 1963 South Bend plant closure gave momentum to the 1974 pension law ERISA?
Studebaker
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.
Q 16What does COBRA, the law letting departing employees keep group health coverage, stand for?
Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act
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.
Q 17How much notice of a mass layoff does the WARN Act require from employers with 100+ workers?
60 days
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.
Q 18USERRA, signed in 1994, protects the civilian jobs of which group?
Military service members
Military service members, including reservists and National Guard members, are guaranteed reemployment in their civilian jobs after service under the 1994 act.
Q 19GINA, enacted in 2008, prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of what?
Genetic information
Genetic information, including family medical history, cannot be used in hiring or insurance decisions under GINA, which passed the Senate 95-0 in 2008.
Q 20The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was the first bill signed by which president?
Barack Obama
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.
Horace Gray Wood's 1877 treatise Master and Servant asserted that indefinite hiring is presumed at-will, a presumption later called 'Wood's rule'.
Q 24In April 2024, which US agency issued a rule banning non-compete agreements nationwide?
Federal Trade Commission
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.
Q 25Who wrote The Principles of Scientific Management, voted the 20th century's most influential management book?
Frederick W. Taylor
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.
Q 26The Hawthorne studies of the 1920s were conducted at a plant belonging to which company?
Western Electric
Western Electric's Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois, made telephone equipment and relays; workers seemed to get more productive with every lighting change.
Q 27Which Harvard professor's Hawthorne studies work founded the human relations movement?
Elton Mayo
Elton Mayo, an Australian-born psychologist, joined Harvard Business School in 1926 and led the interviewing phase of the Hawthorne studies from 1928.
Q 28In what year did Abraham Maslow publish "A Theory of Human Motivation"?
1943
1943, in Psychological Review; Maslow never drew the famous pyramid himself, which appeared in later textbooks and consultants' diagrams.
Q 29In Herzberg's two-factor theory, what are the conditions that merely prevent dissatisfaction called?
Hygiene factors
Salary and safe conditions are hygiene factors: their absence upsets people, but their presence does not motivate.
Q 30Who developed Theory X and Theory Y, the contrasting models of how managers view workers?
Douglas McGregor
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.