Over the past century, many individuals have contributed to the development of the  human resource management concept. Edward Ned Hay (1891–1958), founder of the Hay Group, is clearly one of the most influential.

He was the head of per­son­nel at the Bank of Penn­syl­va­nia for many years; where he became a men­tor to Isabel Brig­gs Myers (one of the inven­tors and founders of the Myers-Brig­gs test). Hay trained her about test con­struc­tion, scor­ing, val­i­da­tion, and statistics.

Dur­ing World War II, he became the Deputy Admin­is­tra­tor for the Office of Price Administration.

He found­ed the con­sult­ing firm Hay Group in 1943, and is well known in the human resources com­mu­ni­ty for this action.

In addi­tion to found­ing one of the most respect­ed human resource man­age­ment con­sult­ing firms in the world, he was also the edi­tor of Per­son­nel Jour­nal, which lat­er became one of the most respect­ed jour­nals in the field of human resource man­age­ment. The mag­a­zine is now called “Work­force Man­age­ment mag­a­zine”. The fol­low­ers of this pub­li­ca­tion will nev­er for­get him and his services.

Scientific activities of Edward Ned Hay

After the death of Charles Slo­combe in Decem­ber 1946, Hay was appoint­ed as pub­lish­er and edi­tor of Per­son­nel mag­a­zine. Accord­ing to him­self, he was ini­tial­ly sup­posed to hold this posi­tion tem­porar­i­ly, but this posi­tion con­tin­ued until his death in 1958.

What Edward Hay left behind was very influ­en­tial and his works have remained for years. He drew atten­tion to the human side of man­age­ment, which had been rarely seen until then. In this way, he intro­duced a new per­spec­tive of man­age­ment in organizations.

Application of Hay Group job evaluation in determining human resource compensation

One of his inno­va­tions was the use of job eval­u­a­tion results to deter­mine salaries and com­pen­sa­tion of employ­ees. Before him, the method used to deter­mine the salaries of indi­vid­u­als was based on com­par­ing the job title in ques­tion with what was paid for sim­i­lar jobs in the labor mar­ket. And it is clear how many lim­i­ta­tions and weak­ness­es this method had.

Anoth­er group of com­pa­nies relied on bar­gain­ing. A method that, while inef­fi­cient, cre­at­ed great chal­lenges for both employ­ees and labor unions.

Hay’s pres­ence in Per­son­nel mag­a­zine was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to spread these ideas and raise the col­lec­tive aware­ness of the busi­ness world. These were very influ­en­tial years in the world of the mar­ket and busi­ness. In those years human resources were intro­duced as one of the main foun­da­tions of the com­pa­ny’s pro­duc­tion and suc­cess, and com­pa­nies were hun­gry for new solu­tions to man­age this vital factor.

At the same time, he devel­oped many of these con­cepts in the Hay Group and pre­sent­ed them as exec­u­tive solu­tions to aspir­ing com­pa­nies and imple­ment­ed them. Focus on com­pen­sa­tion and rewards, tal­ent devel­op­ment, orga­ni­za­tion­al effec­tive­ness, and work­force par­tic­i­pa­tion were the main fea­tures of the Hay method.

Edward Ned Hay passed the way in 1958 and left behind high­ly effec­tive and unique solu­tions for job analy­sis and job pro­files, job eval­u­a­tion and grad­ing, com­pen­sa­tion and ben­e­fits sys­tems, employ­ee effec­tive­ness through enable­ment and improv­ing employ­ee engagement.

The stocks of the Hay Group com­pa­ny were recent­ly obtained by the Korn Fer­ry . This acqui­si­tion and change of own­er­ship has not changed the Hay Group job eval­u­a­tion method. The prin­ci­ples of job eval­u­a­tion and com­pen­sa­tion that he found­ed are still used in many suc­cess­ful and bench­mark com­pa­nies around the world.

Dr. Morad Ahmadipour

* Rayan Rah­bord Lts. which is well known Human Resources Con­sult­ing Com­pa­ny in Iran, offers train­ing work­shops and con­sult­ing ser­vices based on the Hay model.

We offer Labor Law and Employ­ment Law con­sult­ing ser­vices with cer­ti­fied con­sul­tant also.

Con­tact us on What­sApp: (98) 9331382211 and phone num­ber (98) 21 44540912