His 300 - History and Your Career

History and Your Career

Terrie Banks

HIS300

May 22, 2016

Prof. Hansen

        History and Your Career        

        As a child growing up I always knew that I wanted my career to be a job where I was helping others in some way, shape, or form. Having a knack for arguing and persuading people to believe what I say, of course it would only be logical that I was leaning towards being a defense attorney. As I started to get older I got interested in forensic pathology, but once I found out how much schooling was involved, that thought went out the window. It wasn’t until I worked for one of the most horrible bosses ever and seen how she treated the employees that I figured out what I really wanted to do.

        Human resource management, also known as personnel administration until about 10-15 years ago, was a well-established field in the United States by the 1920s. The main focus of this staff in an organization were the technical facets of the evaluating, hiring, training, and compensation of the employees. Because of an increase in competitive pressures in the 1970s, due to rapid technology change, deregulation, and globalization ("Historical Background Of Human Resource Management - what is human resource ?," n.d.).

        The first form of HR was called the industrial welfare and it consisted of male factory inspectors due to the factories act in 1833. Legislation passed in 1876 that adjusted the hours that women and children were allowed to work to only 60 per week. At the same time unions were starting to pop up. By the year 1913 the industrial welfare workers had grown drastically that Seebohm Rowntree starting organizing conference known as welfare workers association which later changed to Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (Chukwunonso, 2013).

        Selection and recruitment didn’t began until around the World War I when Mary Woods was asked to attract women to assist in the daily demands that were needed to fulfill the increasing need for personnel development testing. Not long after, in 1921 psychologists from the national institute published the results of those studies that dealt with training methods, selection tests, and interviewing techniques. Once the 2nd World War approached that’s when the focus shifted to and selection process and not long after training followed as well as discipline, health and safety, improving morale and motivation, wage policies, and joint consultation. Because of this shift in focus companies had to implement personnel departments into their organizations that had trained staff in them (Chukwunonso, 2013).