Employee turnover: What you can learn

Do you know your employee turnover rate? Better, what are you learning from looking at it?

Turnover rate is easy to figure. Take your number of employees at the start of a period – month, quarter, year – and divide it into the number of employees who left during the period. You’ll get a percentage you can compare with previous periods, or with competitors.

But you can learn even more by refining the kind of turnover you calculate. For instance, calculate voluntary turnover by including only employees who left on their own, as opposed to those laid off or fired.

Or you can dig deeper and calculate the turnover of specific groups – protected classes, high-potential employees, those with specific skills, those working under certain supervisors, etc. The more you dig, the more useful data you get.

photo credit: marlon.net