# Why another employee does not fix overload: two checks first [Home](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en) › [Study](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study) › [Articles](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study/articles) author: [Axel Jedlitschka](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/about) published: 2026-10-13 updated: 2026-10-13 language: en reading time: 4 min topic: Personnel source booklet: [The Person I Hired Isn't Working Out](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/personnel) Another employee does not fix overload when the people you already have are underused or do not know exactly what to do. If you have too much work, the first fix that comes to mind is to hire somebody else. According to the source, two things need checking before any such hire: how fully your current people are being used, and whether they know what to do at all. ## A gate with two conditions According to the source, every demand for more people meets a gate with two conditions. The first is a full utilization survey of the part of the business that is asking. The second is a full hat inspection of everyone who works in that part. In plain words, these are two questions. How much of the capacity of the people you already have is in use? And do they know what to do, meaning do they have a hat and are they trained on it? Both questions look at people who are already in the business. Neither one looks at the next candidate. Why utilization? Because according to the source, personnel are not really personnel until they are utilized. Someone who has no idea what they are doing counts as unused, and so does someone who has no idea but believes otherwise. You have them in the business, and you do not have what they were supposed to give you. Suppose an owner who wanted a third employee. The check showed that the second one was doing work that could have been dropped altogether. Or suppose a studio owner who looked into it and found that an instructor lost an hour every day laying out equipment. That is a storage problem, and hiring is no answer to it. The booklet adds that an area short of people can still hold together. An area that is short of people and where nobody has been trained is already on a countdown, and one more untrained person does not stop it. Suppose a studio owner who took on a third instructor without repairing what the two she already had were missing. She ended up with three untrained instructors instead of two. ## When the one asking is you In a small business nobody comes to you asking for another employee. The request comes from you, sometimes at three in the morning after a hard week, and that is why both checks apply to you too. According to the source, you can recruit madly and answer every frantic demand for people, and still waste all of them, because they have no full hats and no full training on them. The source also names the double bind: there is no money, so you cannot hire, and there are no people, so you cannot produce. The two checks start with what you already have, and the booklet's position is that another person is not the answer. Suppose an owner who recruited during a busy month and wrote nothing down. Three weeks on, he was doing his own job and the new person's. Now suppose another owner who wrote the hat before recruiting, even though it cost a fortnight's delay. The new employee was working independently from day six. Notice the arithmetic in the two examples: two weeks of waiting on one side, three weeks of double work on the other. **Anyone too busy to write a hat is too busy to recruit, because recruiting costs more.** ## Fifty-seven people According to the source, one personnel office loaded an organisation full, and a month later fifty-seven people who had been neither used nor assigned were combed out of the debris. The excuses were that they were too new and could not be assigned, and the head of personnel was blamed for recruiting unsuitable people. The source gives the real reason: “Because the hatting, training, apprenticing actions were neglected!” So the people received the label, and the failure belonged to what the organisation never did with them. In a small business the numbers are smaller and the mechanism is the same. Suppose an owner who took on two people at the same time during a busy season. Both left, though neither had been a poor hire. Or suppose an owner who took on one person and hatted her fully. She stayed for four years. The booklet gives this chapter two short exercises, called check and calculate. The practice section at the end also has one called the two checks. So when it seems that another person is missing, remember that the source puts two questions in front of the hiring, and both are about the people you already have. The booklet is general knowledge about managing people, not legal advice. - [The Person I Hired Isn't Working Out](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/personnel): A diagnosis that divides into two things only, and a one-page document that solves the second of them. --- [עברית](https://theonlyaxelj.com/he/study/articles/check-before-hiring-another-employee) · [Español](https://theonlyaxelj.com/es/study/articles/check-before-hiring-another-employee)