I have always followed a doctrine of hiring or recruiting in excess.
There is a heavy turnover in personnel. There are many stresses in human society.
You lose people from all ranks, particularly toward the top. Early on, for instance, I never could keep a secretary. Because she’d been my secretary, she could get a big-pay job (one of them $10,000 a year) from a bigwig. Or some young man had to marry her (and divorce her when she was no longer so glamorously placed). Anyway she was trained and had become an executive secretary. The only one I know of who didn’t go UP had a commie husband making sure she went down.
So the higher they go
A. The more altitude they have that has market value, and
B. The more stress that hits them and blows them apart.
This is true of auditors. You’ll lose three times as many Class VIIIs as you lose Class Vis. You’ll lose three times as many Class Vis as you do Class IVs. Etc. And you’ll lose more auditors than you will admin people.
Therefore you have to be very careful indeed who you send for full-time, expensive technical training. You have to ask these questions:
A. Is the candidate a uniformly good HDC auditor?
B. Is the candidate scheduled for a technical post?
C. Is the candidate a fast study by record?
D. Is the candidate uninvolved with anti-Scientology or non-Scientology connections such as wife or family?
E. Is the candidate out of personal debt?
F. Does the candidate have a good record of keeping his promises?
G. Is the candidate willing to sign a new contract and note?
H. Have the candidate’s stats been high on post or especially in auditing?
I. Does the candidate stay with the org and not go into franchise?
If the answer to all these is emphatically yes there is a chance that the org will benefit. If any of these are no, or if any are even maybe, then don’t do it. Find somebody who will be able to get a YES on every one. They are more numerous than you suppose.
This is also true for highly specialized admin training. The same list except for B (and is scheduled for an admin post and is a candidate for higher org admin training) applies rigorously.
Failing to establish these things first and getting it all understood, you can find yourself with all such funds expended and no highly trained personnel either.
The percentage of loss or incompetence discovered is hard to establish but is remarkably high. In the decade from 1960-1970, personnel turnover was quite heavy even in orgs that were booming.
During that time staff staff auditing was at a minimum. The orgs were jittery under psychiatric inspired attacks. Dianetic tech was not in use until mid-1969. From 1966 to 1970 Scientology tech was quickie and the Grade and Class Chart not followed. Pay, after I ceased to be Executive Director, was low. Therefore you can make a list of things that have to be in hand to reduce heavy turnover.
1. Audit staffs well and train them for Staff Status.
2. Keep PRO area control in, in areas and in the org.
3. Use Dianetics heavily and teach it well.
4. Keep all Scientology tech materials in action with tapes and all materials and books in full use, well used, well taught.
5. Keep personal and sectional, departmental and divisional stats high.
6. Keep the org recruited up.
7. Keep personnel programed.
8. Hold the form of the org.
9. Deliver an excellent, flubless product.
10. Work for volume of training and processing as the org’s product.
As recruitment was also neglected and as contracts expired without being filled, we can add
11. Overrecruit always.
If you have an idea you will need twenty people in the next six months, you had better take on at least forty and you will have your twenty. And double is a low figure.
A firm hires a girl to write their letters. After 60 days they find she doesn’t do her job. So they get rid of her and hire another. And in 90 days find she can’t do her job. So they fire her and hire another.... That’s 150 days of no correspondence. It’s enough to ruin any firm. It’s costly.
A firm hires three girls feeling they need one.
At the end of 150 days they have one girl.
But they had 150 days of correspondence. And a profit.
The economical answer in terms of saved profit is keep up the production. Don’t fixate on personnel. Always do multiple personnel procurement.
In actual practice when you do this, you seldom fire anyone. They blow off or they were actually needed.
If people are let go, you don’t just brush your hands of it. You in an organization can let them continue being programed while they hold an outside job, fix them up, get them trained and hire them later.
Modern society is very loose footed. The state pays them not to work (apparently only). The society is suppressively oriented. The push and pull of personal relationships is poor.
You are edged in upon a society of dying cultural values, encroaching drugs, threatened annihilation.
No one out there feels very safe.
This insecurity leaks into the org and people get pushed around or push people around.
Real or fancied wrongs occur.
People are rather timid really.
And the more the society buys the idea it’s a world of tooth and claw, the more it becomes so.
All this reflects into the picture of personnel.
You have to really work to keep orgs manned and trained up.
You do this by
A. Running a very good org
B. Delivering an excellent product
C. Keeping a steady inflow of new personnel
D. Training and processing well those you have.
If the 1 to 11 are in, in the org, then EXPANSION occurs and, losing hardly anyone, you have to scramble to keep up.
As the INCOME OF THE ORG DEPENDS WHOLLY ON ITS GDSes (Gross Divisional Statistics) and as these are wholly under the control of the org, then it’s obvious that the only finance trouble or pay trouble an org can have is by undermanning, undertraining and underproducing.
No great international GI slump has ever occurred unless there has been a long GDS slump. So it’s obvious that an undermanned org is asking for a cave-in.Much of this has been learned in recent years.
At this writing there is little or no recruitment by HCOs and training of staffs could be better.
But the lessons we learn, we learn and apply.
And so it is with personnel.