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Last reviewed September 2026

Glossary

Employee turnover

Employee turnover is the share of staff who left in a period, usually a year: leavers divided by average headcount, split into voluntary and involuntary. The split matters more than the total, because letting go of two people you should never have hired is a different story from four good ones resigning. Track first-year turnover on its own; that one is a hiring measure.

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Splitting the number so it says something useful

A monthly or quarterly row. A weekly board cannot carry it, because in most weeks nobody leaves. What the Scorecard can carry is the leading side: one-on-ones held, seats open, days a seat has stayed open, and new hires past their ninety-day mark with a plan somebody actually signed.

Turnover arrives too late to fix and costs too much to ignore, so the interesting work all sits in front of it. Replacing somebody costs a large fraction of their salary once you count recruiting, the empty seat and the months of learning. A company measuring only the annual percentage hears about a problem two quarters after the first person left.

Worked example: A regional accounting firm ran turnover at eleven percent and treated it as normal for the sector. Split out, voluntary turnover among staff with under two years of service was thirty-one percent, and all of it came from one office. The annual number had hidden that for three years, because the other two offices barely moved at all.

Sources: klipfolio.com/kpis/human-resources; bls.gov/jlt/jltdef.htm

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