Posts Tagged ‘Robert Owen’

The market term “Talent Management” has been around for the last 15 years or so. Only recently have companies realized that people are their greatest asset. One of the earliest pioneers of the modern company was Robert Owen, a Welshman born in 1771. Owen was the Jim Goodnight (from SAS) of his time and a successful textile entrepreneur by the time he was 30. He was berated in the business community because he didn’t think eight-year-olds should work thirteen hour weeks. Here is an excerpt from a historian who covered him (O’Toole, 1995).

Owen provided clean, decent housing for his workers and their families in a community free of contagious disease, crime, and gin shops. He took young children out of the factory and enrolled them in a school he founded. There he provided preschool, day care, and a brand of progressive education that stresses learning as a pleasurable experience (along with the first adult night school). The entire business world was shocked when he prohibited corporal punishment in his factory and dumbfounded when he retrained his supervisors in human disciplinary practices. While offering his workers an extremely high standard of living compared to other workers of the era. Owen was making a fortune.

Owen tried to convince his fellow capitalist that an investment in people provides greater return than an investment in tangible assets. He was 150 years ahead of his time. Numerous studies conclude that an investment in people yields long-term success in any company.