By Glenn Ruffenach
Few parts of American corporations today are more important -- and more maligned -- than human-resource management. On one hand, HR departments are frequently tasked with recruiting and hiring the best people possible and, ideally, helping these individuals succeed at, and be fulfilled by, their jobs.
On the other hand, HR seems to have a knack for driving these same people to distraction with piles of paperwork, social engineering and ever-changing policies.
To look at what HR departments do -- and don't do -- well, we spoke with Allison Elias, assistant professor of business administration at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia and author of "The Rise of Corporate Feminism," which looks at the development of human resource management in the latter half of the 20th century. Here are edited excerpts from that conversation.
From the beginning
WSJ: Let's start with some background. When and why did HR originate?
ALLISON ELIAS: The HR we know today -- with credentialed professionals managing tasks like hiring and firing, benefits, training, grievances -- didn't really come along until the 1980s. Its predecessor, the personnel department, emerged in the early 1900s.
At the time, labor and capital were fighting, literally, over issues like higher wages and safer conditions. Some companies called on state militia and federal troops to put down uprisings and hired private security forces to protect so-called scabs. They also started looking for ways to ease these conflicts while keeping productivity and profits high. That's where we first see personnel departments.
WSJ: How did personnel departments help?
ELIAS: John Lee, Ford Motor's first personnel manager, is a good example.
As we know, Henry Ford achieved huge efficiency gains by building his Model T's on moving assembly lines. But he also faced enormous turnover rates, estimated as much as 400% annually. Lee diagnosed the causes as long hours and low wages. So, Ford shaved an hour off the workday, to eight hours from nine, and doubled daily pay to $5.
The morning after the announcement of the "Five Dollar Day," 10,000 people assembled at the Ford plant in Highland Park, Mich., looking for jobs.
A matter of trust
WSJ: HR today isn't always the most popular of departments with employees. Why is that? What is HR getting wrong?
ELIAS: Trust is a big issue.
Employees want to feel trusted -- and to trust HR. They want more than a transactional relationship with HR. And in many companies, employees don't feel like HR cares about them or can deliver on making changes.
For instance, sending out a one-way survey to gather employee opinions is great. But what if there's no follow-up? A lot of times, employees aren't informed of survey results or told how HR will work to address their priorities.
From an employee's perspective, HR often lacks responsiveness and empathy, as well as the ability to enact change.
WSJ: What changes are employees looking for?
ELIAS: The broad answer is the "employee experience."
Once upon a time, many companies thought wages -- and wages alone -- were what motivated workers. And companies rewarded their employees with that thinking in mind: "The more pig iron you load, the higher your daily wage." In the 1920s, though, Harvard professor Elton Mayo and others launched what came to be known as the "human relations" movement -- the possibility that nonfinancial factors could motivate employees. And that idea is central to today's HR.
So, companies tend to task HR with improving the "employee experience," which in recent years is the terminology for how both workers and HR managers view HR's reason for being. Workers think: "HR is supposed to be on my side and make work great." But if work is not great -- if it isn't fulfilling and helping workers thrive -- then the HR department seems ineffective in many corporations.
Automating transactions
WSJ: What is it that HR could do that they aren't doing to make work great?
ELIAS: First, decrease employee time and effort regarding what we might call "transactional touchpoints" -- how many vacation days are left; what a new deduction from a pay slip means; or how to apply for parental leave. This is where people get annoyed with HR, when they're emailing back and forth with someone in HR who is giving them lengthy directions for how to access benefits information.
Here's where technology makes a big difference. Some of the best HR departments are now automating these transactional tasks. IBM's AskHR is a good example. Questions like "When is open enrollment?" can be answered by an AI-powered agent that is trained to flag more-complex issues to go to a person. According to IBM, 94% of employee questions are resolved without needing to be routed outside of AskHR to a human HR specialist; thus, the time employees interact with HR is reduced.
WSJ: And after automating transactions? What comes next?
ELIAS: Then, you can use this same technology to concentrate on employee development, helping them work toward their goals. Cloud-based platforms can give us immediate access to volumes of data about workers -- their background, skills, training, learning preferences, past performance -- and can help HR design a personalized path for each.
For instance, maybe an employee could benefit from a particular type of training or position to get a promotion. HR, ideally, will be able to anticipate that need and help steer that worker accordingly. All these improvements to employee experience require collaboration between HR and the IT department. And most HR departments are still figuring out the best ways to use the data that exists already in their cloud platforms.
WSJ: What other challenges is HR facing today?
ELIAS: For one, they need more bodies.
At many companies there is a single person in charge of HR, which might mean that compliance alone -- staying abreast of federal, state and local laws and regulations -- consumes that person's days. And as CFOs push to streamline costs, adding HR staff is unlikely. Ideally, there should be one to four HR staff per 100 employees. Too few HR staff members has been shown to lead to greater turnover in a company's ranks.
Success stories
WSJ: Where can we see some HR success stories? What are some HR departments getting right?
ELIAS: The best HR departments actively set up new hires for success and then continue to tweak the process based on feedback from new hires and their managers.
That process can start with "preboarding" -- reaching out to help integrate the new hire into an organization's culture and into their job before the new hire even begins. Maybe HR has those on the new hire's team send emails or handwritten letters to the person. Or they might send the new hire a company-branded coffee mug, pen or shirt.
We then move to "onboarding." At Google, for instance, hiring managers have a checklist of responsibilities to support their new hires, who are known as Nooglers. The hiring manager schedules regular meetings for the first few months for role clarity and to help with mastering new tasks. Most Nooglers are also matched with an onboarding "buddy," a peer who can help with job-related questions or provide social and emotional support.
Glenn Ruffenach, a former editor and reporter at The Wall Street Journal, is a writer in Atlanta. He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 12, 2025 09:00 ET (14:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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