I have always followed a doctrine of hiring or recruiting in excess.

It is an observation that personnel, by critical definition, is “that function which creates havoc in one place in an org by trying to solve a personnel mess in another.”

There is a heavy turnover in personnel. There are many stresses in human society.

Example: We have just gotten in our Div 6. It has two people. The org has been suffering for lack of Div 6 actions. Now we’ve finally got two people there and they are being trained up. Meanwhile there is a shortage of staff in CF. Personnel “solves” the CF problem by transferring those in Div 6 to CF in Div 2. There goes any progress on Div 6.

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.

By solving one problem, another is created.

So the higher they go

Also there is the fact that it takes a while to train someone on a post and get the post in order. So rapid transfers defeat any post training or competence.

A. The more altitude they have that has market value, and

We call this action “musical chairs.” That is a game in which people rapidly change positions.

B. The more stress that hits them and blows them apart.

So these transfers defeat not only the org on the third dynamic but also the individual on the first dynamic.

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.

An earlier action similar to this went on. Then whenever Tech got an auditor trained up, Personnel would transfer the auditor to an admin post.

Therefore you have to be very careful indeed who you send for full-time, expensive technical training. You have to ask these questions:

As the auditor was tech trained and not OEC trained, you began to find auditors in charge but they didn’t have any admin training, thus shattering, by ignorance, the org form and defeating the org’s production.

A. Is the candidate a uniformly good HDC auditor?

I’ve just seen a case where a staff member went on full-time training Class VI (very expensive) and was made HCO ES on his return. But had never had an OEC.

B. Is the candidate scheduled for a technical post?

Using the Tech Divs as a “personnel pool” and taking tech people for admin posts thus defeats twice — defeats the org as a producing activity and defeats its form by not training people in admin (OEC) when they are going to be used in admin.

C. Is the candidate a fast study by record?

These personnel errors (or crimes) cause every staff member to suffer in terms of lowered income, lowered pay, lowered facilities, lower success. I doubt there is any org where these errors (or crimes) are not current at this writing.

D. Is the candidate uninvolved with anti-Scientology or non-Scientology connections such as wife or family?

To give the HCO ES candidate full-time training on the OEC or FEBC would make sense. Not Class VI! If you reverse it, you’ll see what I mean: we give a new staff member an OEC only and put him onto auditing. Of course that would be disastrous. It’s just as disastrous the other way around — taking an auditor who is a Class VI but not an OEC grad and making him the HCO Area Sec!

E. Is the candidate out of personal debt?

There is an optimum executive who is both an experienced, trained administrator (OEC and time on org posts) and an auditor. But an org would have to be in high production with lots of auditors before that could happen.

F. Does the candidate have a good record of keeping his promises?

G. Is the candidate willing to sign a new contract and note?

These errors are of long duration. They happen over and over. And they do more to destroy an org than any other action.

H. Have the candidate’s stats been high on post or especially in auditing?

A. Making a hole in one place to remedy a hole in another

I. Does the candidate stay with the org and not go into franchise?

B. Training a person for tech but not admin and putting him in admin

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.

C. Using the Tech Divs as personnel pools from which to man other divs

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.

D. Rapid shifts of post

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.

E. Leaving areas in an org unmanned.

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.

The reason why these things are done all come under the heading of failures to recruit and properly train.

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.

Org expansion often gets pinned by false economy in personnel. “If we hired anyone else, we would get less pay.” This completely overlooks the fact that if the org doesn’t hire more people it will go broke. An org has to be of a certain size to be solvent; it has certain basic expenses such as rent which makes it cost just so much to run. Yet personnel can be so poorly thought out that the org is kept at starvation level.

1. Audit staffs well and train them for Staff Status.

I heard one not long ago which takes a prize, “But we don’t need an Advance Registrar. We can’t afford one anyway. You see we have pcs booked in advance for ten weeks already as we don’t have enough auditors, so why should we have any further promotion?” An idiot smile went with this of course. Backlog became “advance registration.”

2. Keep PRO area control in, in areas and in the org.

Orgs in various ways fix their income and prevent its increase. First and foremost of these is personnel.

3. Use Dianetics heavily and teach it well.

In every org where I have acted as Executive Director, I have had a personnel procurement problem. In each case the problem was internally created. First I would get, “Well, units are low . . .” or “Nobody ever applies.” I would take it from there. I finally became very clever at these impasses. “What,” I would ask the Receptionist, “do you tell people who come looking for a job?” Cunning. “Oh them!” I would get, “I tell them we aren’t hiring of course.” I would set up a line from a specially appointed personnel person to me only and would shortly have enough people. I have run an org from eight people to sixty-three in thirty days and its GI from £50 to £3,000 in sixty days. Just by doing the usual. It created awful problems of course, like auditing rooms, classrooms, hand grooving people onto posts — it was busy. The favorite graveyard calm, so adored there before that, got shattered to hell!

4. Keep all Scientology tech materials in action with tapes and all materials and books in full use, well used, well taught.

I concluded many times then and conclude now that it is a characteristic of an org to refuse new personnel and to keep them off. In approaching this problem in an org, I am afraid experience has taught me to begin with that assumption and handle it from that viewpoint.

5. Keep personal and sectional, departmental and divisional stats high.

So I normally set up a line that can’t be stopped and get people on post. Then I force in training on posts. And I personally inspect and talk to every section every day about what they need and how it’s going and keep up their section production.

6. Keep the org recruited up.

LRH Comms tell me they cant get execs to inspect their areas daily. And personnel shortages show that others do not blow the lines open on recruiting and even prevent handling.

7. Keep personnel programed.

So here is one area where I do some things in managing a production org that not many others do:

8. Hold the form of the org.

1. Force recruitment

9. Deliver an excellent, flubless product.

2. Train on post

10. Work for volume of training and processing as the org’s product.

3. Daily inspection and comm with everyone in the place in his post area

As recruitment was also neglected and as contracts expired without being filled, we can add

4. Concentrate on section and individual production

11. Overrecruit always.

5. Let people finish the job they are on.

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.

The result of all this has uniformly been sky-high stats, sky-high pay, huge reserves and excellent tech produced.

So these are the magic solutions.

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.

I do NOT empty out tech to fill admin. I do NOT encourage transfers. I do NOT create problems in one area by transferring to another. I will NOT accept that no one applies for jobs. And I don’t wreck one project by grabbing people off it to start another. I FIND NEW PEOPLE.

A firm hires three girls feeling they need one.

Behind every “impossibility” lies some great big WHY which if not found keeps things messed up. One area that “couldn’t get any auditors” had expelled 60% of the field from the church! Another area had dismissed 50% of staff every time the income dropped. Another area cut the staffs pay very low and then made it go lower each time the gross income fell. Another “never could find the right people.”

At the end of 150 days they have one girl.

Sometimes internal squabbles are given a much higher importance than the org itself.

But they had 150 days of correspondence. And a profit.

Some areas use “social acceptability” instead of stats to handle personnel.

The economical answer in terms of saved profit is keep up the production. Don’t fixate on personnel. Always do multiple personnel procurement.

Whatever the reason an org isn’t getting on, it is internal. It isn’t some other org or some senior management body. It’s right inside that org. Further, it has to do with personnel mishandling.

In actual practice when you do this, you seldom fire anyone. They blow off or they were actually needed.

Any org at any time has not given as much quantity of service as the public demanded. If you continued to expand at the rate of demand, giving very high quality of service mind you, the org would expand to hundreds or even thousands of staff members.

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.

Somewhere, when that doesn’t happen, personnel mishandling has cut off the expansion.

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.

So when we look this over, we find that quality of delivered product determines how much it will be in demand and that the only thing which will limit an expansion to meet that demand is personnel procurement, training and stability on post, getting the staff to produce and holding the form of the org and making it go.

You are edged in upon a society of dying cultural values, encroaching drugs, threatened annihilation.

When personnel commits the errors (or crimes) mentioned here and when management fails to do the 1 to 5 listed above that I do in an org, there will be a halt.

No one out there feels very safe.

True, an org is complex. True, quality is hard to maintain. True, one has to work. But unless personnel procurement and handling is IN, all else will fail. So that’s the weak spot.

This insecurity leaks into the org and people get pushed around or push people around.

An undermanned division will empty.

Real or fancied wrongs occur.

An undermanned org will pay badly and go down.

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.