Employee Turnover

What is employee turnover?

Employee turnover measures how many employees leave (voluntarily or not) within a time period, typically a year. According to the U.S. Bureau of Statistics, the average turnover rate in the U.S. is about 12% to 15% annually.

What factors cause employee turnover?

There are many factors that can drive employees to leave:

• Favoritism—special treatment (or the appearance of it) for some employees over others can create a negative work environment, resentment and low morale.
• Intimidation—an organization driven by fear and compulsion is one that will have a hard time retaining top talent. Anyone able is likely to walk away.
• Micromanagement—overbearing supervision gets old quick. It steals time from managers and wastes employee talent and energy.
• Poor Communication—ineffective, insufficient, and inefficient communication can lead to frustration and failure because even the best employees have a hard time reading minds and spinning wheels.
• Lack of recognition—employees feel their contribution is not valued.
• Sink or swim—employees are left on their own to succeed without coaching, mentoring or support. While some can survive, most want more from their team and management.
• Boredom—if job content and environment are not interesting an employee may begin to look elsewhere for better work.

What can I do to reduce turnover?

• Improve engagement
• Increase coaching
• Provide upskilling for employees
• Create a careers paths program
• Offer flexible scheduling
• Offer remote work
• Improve benefits

How can stay interviews help?

Stay interviews help you and your HR director zero in on specific problems to reduce turnover. Stay interviews help determine general employee satisfaction, identify problems that lead to turnover, pinpoint factors leading to satisfaction, and measure satisfaction with immediate supervisors. The insight from stay interviews can be used to improve overall business effectiveness as well as reduce employee turnover.

See also

• Employee Retention
• Attrition
• Churn Rate
• Turnover

Additional resources

• Human Resources Techniques that Improve Communication and Help You Keep Your Best Employees
• The Good, Bad, and Ugly: Management Effect on Employee Retention
• Payroll Experts Has 97 Percent Retention Rate with SwipeClock
• How Workforce Management for Manufacturing Increases Employee Retention
• Proven Strategies from Successful Businesses to Keep Your Employees from Quitting