Employee Turnover Calculation: Method, Analysis, and Actions

In today’s fast-paced workplace, employee turnover has become a crucial HR indicator. It measures the fluctuation of staff within a company over a given period. Understanding the reasons behind voluntary or involuntary departures provides valuable insights to prevent talent loss and optimize internal processes.

Let’s take a closer look at how to calculate turnover, why it is such a meaningful metric, and how to analyze results to improve employee satisfaction, cost management, and productivity.

What Do We Mean by Employee Turnover?

In HR, turnover refers to the rate at which employees leave a company and are replaced over a set period. It is usually expressed as a percentage.

Turnover can be divided into two main categories:

• Voluntary turnover: when employees decide to leave on their own initiative.
• Involuntary turnover: when departures are imposed, such as dismissals, layoffs, or early retirements.

Why Regularly Calculate Turnover?

Turnover represents the replacement rate within a workforce. Beyond the number itself, it is a valuable HR indicator for evaluating company performance, employee satisfaction, and retention capacity.

Gauging Workplace Climate and Conditions

A high turnover rate often signals a negative social climate. Employees may feel unsafe, face psychosocial risks (stress, harassment, violence), lack adequate resources, autonomy, or balance between work and personal life. These factors can drive even well-paid employees to leave.

Workplace atmosphere and conditions often outweigh salary in retention. A toxic or disengaging environment will inevitably raise turnover.

HR tip: To go beyond a simple turnover calculation, companies should measure workplace climate more broadly—through employee well-being surveys, well-being barometers, or mental health indices like those provided by teale.

Understanding and Optimizing the Cost of Turnover

High turnover generates both direct and indirect costs:

• Departure costs (severance packages, exit procedures).
• Recruitment costs (sourcing, hiring).
• Onboarding and training costs.
• Productivity loss while new hires adapt to tools, processes, and culture.

Tracking turnover helps assess whether these costs are driven by excessive rotation. It also highlights where improvements are needed: better recruitment processes, stronger onboarding, mentoring programs, or more effective HR tools.

Anticipating and Preventing High Turnover

Adapting to the consequences of high turnover is necessary—but it’s only a temporary fix. Calculating and analyzing turnover should be the first step toward preventing talent loss.

A persistently high rate is a red flag for issues in employee retention, leading to lower productivity, decreased motivation, poor employer branding, and ultimately the departure of top talent.

The Formula to Calculate Employee Turnover

The calculation is simple:

Turnover Rate = (Number of departures during period ÷ Average number of employees during period) × 100

Example: A company had an average of 55 employees in 2023 and recorded 6 departures.
6 ÷ 55 × 100 = 10.9% → a turnover rate considered relatively low and healthy.

How to Analyze Turnover

A turnover percentage alone has limited value. To interpret it correctly, context and comparisons are key.

Compare Against Industry Benchmarks

As a reference point, studies such as those by INSEE (France, 2021) and Hays place the average turnover around 15%. Depending on your sector, this may be higher or lower.

Compare Over Time

Looking at internal trends is even more meaningful than national averages.
For example, if turnover rises from 4% to 10%, then to 12% over a few years, even if below the average, it reveals a negative trend—perhaps reflecting disengagement, retention challenges, or cultural misalignment.

Consider Sector and Context

Turnover rates vary widely by industry, job type, and employment market conditions. Retail and hospitality, for example, naturally report higher rates than banking or public service.

Other factors can also distort figures: mergers and acquisitions, economic layoffs, retirements, or project-based contracts ending.

In short: analyzing turnover requires looking at both the numbers and the underlying context, supported by additional HR indicators.