PERIODIC AUDIT OF PROGRESS 217 
fied to receive regularly reports indicating that all additions to the 
working force and all withdrawals from it are being cleared through 
this department in accordance with the established routine. The 
second is illustrated by the attitude of many employment managers 
who consider their efforts justified so long as the rate of labor turn- 
over is declining or not advancing. This attitude would be warranted 
if the rate of labor turnover were an adequate index respecting the 
accomplishment of all the various purposes for which the employ- 
ment department was established; but this index is so untrustworthy 
that no personnel director should attempt to measure the success of 
his performance by changes in labor turnover alone. Many other 
considerations must enter into a properly balanced judgment. 
Of the two errors, executives concerned with the operation of 
employee representation seem most susceptible to the first. There 
has been little tendency to interpret any single measure as indicative 
of the success or failure of the plan. Occasionally, it is true, an 
enthusiast proclaims a declining rate of labor turnover as proof that 
employee representation is fulfilling its purposes. But his attitude is 
simply another instance of over-zealous devotion to the turnover 
fetish; another time he would be equally ready to declare that it showed 
the success or failure, wisdom or folly, of a pension plan, a stock pur- 
chase plan, or a profit-sharing scheme. There are others, it must also 
be admitted, who have pointed to a gradual decrease in the number of 
grievances brought for adjustment through the procedure established 
by employee representation, as indicating that the plan is operating 
smoothly and meeting the needs it was intended to fill. Butinstead 
of justifying the representation plan by any such single index purport- 
ing to register its results, the usual attitude has been to assume that 
so long as meetings are being held as intended by the plan, its ends 
are being adequately served. 
ESSENTIALS OF AN ADEQUATE AUDIT 
What is needed, and what we endeavor to supply in this chapter, is 
a method for auditing and appraising the plan’s operation. The pro- 
cedure we propose, it will be observed, consists partly of a composite 
of methods now employed by many concerns. These and others 
which seem to us desirable we have combined to form a unified series 
a