The history of personnel management begins around the end of the 19th century, when welfare officers (sometimes called ‘welfare secretaries’) came into being. They were women and concerned only with the protection of women and girls. Their creation was a reaction to the harshness of industrial conditions, coupled with pressures arising from the extension of the franchise, the influence of trade unions and the labour movement, and the campaigning of enlightened employers, often Quakers, for what was called ‘industrial betterment’. As the role grew there was some tension between the aim of moral protection of women and children and the needs for higher output.

The First World War accelerated change in the development of personnel management, with women being recruited in large numbers to fill the gaps left by men going to fight, which in turn meant reaching agreement with trade unions (often after bitter disputes) about ‘dilution’– accepting unskilled women into craftsmen’s jobs and changing manning levels.

During the 1920s, jobs with the titles of ‘labour manager’ or ‘employment manager’ came into being in the engineering industry and other industries where there were large factories, to handle absence, recruitment, dismissal and queries over bonuses and so on. Employers’ federations, particularly in engineering and shipbuilding, negotiated national pay rates with the unions, but there were local and district variations and there was plenty of scope for disputes.

During the 1930s, with the economy beginning to pick up, big corporations in these newer sectors saw value in improving employee benefits as a way of recruiting, retaining and motivating employees. But older industries such as textiles, mining and shipbuilding which were hit by the worldwide recession did not adopt new techniques, seeing no need to do so because they had no difficulty in recruiting