According to the source, when one in ten of the people you recruit does not work out, that is normal. When the failure rate reaches half or more, the problem usually sits inside the business.
The number the source gives
According to the source, when it hears that 80 percent of those recruited were unsuitable, it raises an eyebrow, because that is the wrong percentage. When it hears that 50 percent were dismissed, it raises the other eyebrow.
So what is normal? The answer is short: “Ten percent yes. Fifty to 80 percent no.”
If you took on ten people and one did not fit, you are in the normal range. If your own feeling is that nobody fits, that number is telling a different story.
Suppose an owner who went through five employees in two years and said each time that there are no people any more. Five out of five is nowhere near ten percent.
Or suppose a studio owner where one instructor in eight did not work out. That is inside the range, and it says nothing about anything.
What it means when the number is high
Here too the source does not stop at the diagnosis. It explains what the diagnosis says. According to the source, figures like these show that the screening is happening in the wrong place: a person who is already in the business is shutting others out and pushing them away.
That is hard to hear, and worth stopping on. A failure rate that stays high points at the hats (the written duties of each post), at the training, or at one particular person already there. The labour market does not explain it.
Suppose a practice where every newcomer was gone within two months. The bookkeeper who had been there longest never explained anything, and then complained that the newcomers do not learn.
Or suppose an owner who gave every new employee the work nobody else wanted and never said so. Three of them left in a row.
This connects to the two reasons the booklet opens with. When an employee does not perform, either you did not recruit the right person or you did not train them on the post. A high failure rate is a sign to look at the second reason as well, and not only at the recruiting.
So when you tell yourself there are no good people any more, that conclusion needs evidence. A failure rate of half or more is evidence pointing the other way.
You are not looking for perfect people
The source describes an old way of running things that would have needed flawless people just to function. Its answer is short: “But there are no perfect human beings.”
What the source says it looks for is a small percentage. In other words, you screen out a small minority, and nobody is trying to find people without flaws.
For a small business this is a relief. The task is smaller than it seems: screen out a small minority, and hat all the rest.
Suppose an owner who spent a whole year looking for the right person and did the work herself in the meantime.
Now suppose the same owner hired a reasonable candidate and wrote her a hat. Three months later she was better than the perfect candidate who never appeared.
The question that looks forward
According to the source, it does not matter that a person put a foot wrong. All it cares about is whether they will put it right next time.
It is one question and it is about the future. It does not ask why it happened, and it does not look for someone to blame.
The source also carries a warning. Discipline, punishment and threats can go much too far, and they can upset a person badly instead of bringing them into line.
Suppose an owner who kept returning to one employee's mistake for three weeks. In the end the employee stopped initiating anything at all.
Now suppose the same owner asked what to do so that it would not come back, and updated the hat. The mistake did not repeat.
Or suppose an installer who ruled that each mistake earns the procedure one more line. A year on, he had a solid procedure and a crew that reports problems.
Notice what happens when you ask this question. The answer goes into the hat, and what was one person's mistake becomes a line in the procedure. When a mistake leads to repairing the hat instead of a punishment, the crew starts to report.
The booklet gives this chapter two short exercises, called calculate and conclude.
Ten percent is the ordinary price of working with people. Anything above it is a number pointing inside the business.
The booklet is general knowledge about managing people, not legal advice.