How it started
History
Hewitt Associates was founded in 1940 as "Edwin Shields Hewitt and Associates" and became an American provider of human capital and management consulting services. It operated 500 offices in 120 countries providing consulting, outsourcing, and insurance brokerage services.
Hewitt ceased to exist as an independent entity at the completion of its purchase by Aon in October 2010. Hewitt's operations were merged at that time with some elements of Aon's consulting arm to become a new subsidiary of the Aon Group called Aon Hewitt.
1940s–1970s
Edwin "Ted" Hewitt founded Edwin Shields Hewitt and Associates on October 1, 1940, as a brokerage house focusing on insurance and personal financial services. During and after World War II, Hewitt's expertise became valuable when the government instituted "pay-as-you-go" income taxes in 1943 and the U.S. cost of living increased more than 25 percent in 1945. Once the war and its rationing ended, Americans returned to work and the economy recovered. Hewitt's clients, many of whom had manufactured goods for the war effort, returned to their customary businesses.
Hewitt began offering its clients statements to track their employee benefits and had pioneered the use of financial goals for company investments. Hewitt's programs were the first of their kind to be approved by the Internal Revenue Service; they were so useful that the U.S. Department of Labor asked the firm to create forms for the welfare and pension programs of the 1950s.
From Wikipedia’s article on Aon Hewitt, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2