09/27/2023
Do you know when and why the first HR department was established?
In 1901, The National Cash Register Company created the first-ever personnel department after a series of disastrous strikes and quality control issues. While the department was assigned administrative tasks like hiring and firing, it was also tasked with handling employee grievances.
In an unprecedented move, the owner (John H. Patterson) hired a woman (Lena Harvey Tracey) to lead his new department. He gave her team five guiding principles to follow:
1. Treat people well and they will treat you well. Be square with them.
2. Do not try to take advantage of employees and do not try to get the last cent’s worth of energy out of them.
3. It pays to do good; it pays to help them help themselves in every moral and physical way and to also give them every possible opportunity of advancing.
4. The basis of good product is labor, or workers who go forward willingly and enthusiastically as a team.
5. Let every worker have the opportunity to make complaints and suggestions for betterments, reward them adequately, and make it impossible for a man to be fired on account of a personal dispute with the foreman or other subordinate.
All still relevant and applicable today. And thus, HR professionals are important for any business, and we appreciate HR Pros everywhere!
