The job was invented to keep workers from unionizing.
The personnel department, the predecessor of what is now called human resources, emerged in the early twentieth century as a corporate response to labor unrest. Companies facing strikes, high turnover, and the growing influence of unions created welfare departments to manage worker grievances internally, reducing the appeal of outside organizers.1
National Cash Register established one of the earliest personnel departments around 1901 under Lena Harvey Tracy, who organized worker welfare programs, social clubs, and complaint mechanisms. The goal was to create a direct relationship between the company and its workers that circumvented union intermediaries.2
The role expanded during World War I, when the War Industries Board encouraged corporations to adopt personnel management practices to maintain production. After the war, the field professionalized rapidly. The first university courses in personnel management appeared in the 1920s.3
The Hawthorne studies of the late 1920s and 1930s gave the field a research foundation, showing that worker productivity responded to social and psychological factors, not just wages and physical conditions.
The transformation from "personnel manager" to "human resources manager" happened gradually from the 1960s through the 1990s, reflecting the influence of human capital theory and the growing strategic ambitions of the function.4
By the early twenty-first century, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics classified human resources managers as one of the fastest-growing occupational categories in the American economy.5