Employee Turnover Calculation: Method, Analysis, and Actions

In today’s fast-moving professional world, employee turnover is a key business indicator. It measures the fluctuation of employees within a team over a given period. Understanding the reasons behind voluntary and involuntary departures provides valuable insights to prevent talent loss and improve internal operations.

Let’s look at how to calculate turnover, why the figures matter, and how to use them to improve employee satisfaction, manage costs, and support productivity.

What is employee turnover?

Employee turnover, in HR management, refers to the movement of employees within an organization over a given period. It is generally measured as a rate expressing the percentage of employees who leave the company and are replaced during a defined period.

Turnover can be divided into two main categories: voluntary turnover, when employees decide to leave on their own initiative, and involuntary turnover, which covers forced departures such as dismissals or early retirement.

Why calculate turnover regularly?

Turnover represents the replacement rate within the workforce. But what information can this figure provide to a company and its HR team? This simple percentage can reveal a great deal about company performance, employee satisfaction, and the ability to attract and retain employees.

Assessing workplace climate and working conditions

Many different reasons can explain high turnover. Often, workforce instability results from a negative workplace climate. Employees may feel physically unsafe, face psychosocial risks such as stress, harassment, or violence, lack the resources needed to do their jobs well, have too little autonomy, or struggle to separate their personal and professional lives.

These factors can encourage an employee to leave, even when pay and other benefits are generous. Relationships between colleagues and working conditions often matter more than salary and can explain a high employee turnover rate.

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Measuring turnover-related costs

High turnover generates direct and indirect costs for an organization. These include HR costs related to departure compensation, recruiting new employees, and training new hires. Turnover also affects team productivity: new employees need time to learn processes, become familiar with the tools, build skills, and adapt to the management style.

Calculating turnover can help determine whether direct and indirect costs are linked to excessive employee movement. It can also guide action. If the rate is high, which measures could reduce the cost? Examples include optimizing recruitment processes, using employee referrals, preparing interviews more effectively, investing in mentoring, and adopting more effective HR tools for onboarding and offboarding.

Anticipating organizational risks

Adapting to the negative effects of high turnover is useful, but it may only treat the symptoms. Calculating and analyzing the employee replacement rate should be the first step towards better HR management.

A high rate should alert the organization to difficulties retaining employees and the consequences that follow: low productivity, weak engagement and motivation, a poor employer image among candidates, and the loss of talent.

How do you calculate employee turnover?

Calculating the workforce turnover rate is simple. First, define a period, usually one year. Then collect accurate data on the number of departures and the average number of employees during that period.

The turnover formula

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The result is a percentage representing the turnover rate.

A practical calculation example

Imagine a company with 120 employees on January 1 and 130 employees on December 31. Its average workforce is:

(120 + 130) / 2 = 125 employees

During the same year, 15 employees left the company. The turnover rate is therefore:

(15 / 125) x 100 = 12%

The company’s annual turnover rate is therefore 12%. In other words, during the period studied, departures represented the equivalent of 12% of its average workforce.

For a more detailed analysis, the company can distinguish voluntary from involuntary departures. If 11 of the 15 departures were resignations, the voluntary turnover rate is:

(11 / 125) x 100 = 8.8%

How should you interpret a turnover rate?

On its own, a workforce turnover rate does not say much. When is the figure too high, and what should it be compared with? Here are the keys to interpreting turnover data.

What is a good turnover rate?

According to INSEE figures for 2021 and a study by Hays, average turnover in France is around 15%. This average can provide a starting point for assessing whether your turnover is low, average, or high.

Compare turnover with your industry

Turnover must be considered in light of the characteristics of the industry. Restaurants, hospitality, retail, call centers, care services, and event businesses generally experience more employee movement than manufacturing, banking, or technical activities that require scarce skills.

Analyze changes over time

Beyond comparing your rate with the average across French companies, it is important to compare your replacement rate with previous periods. Is it stable, increasing, or decreasing?

For example, turnover rising from 4% to 10% and then to 12% over several years may indicate an unfavorable trend. Even if the rate remains below average, the organization is experiencing more departures, which may point to a deteriorating workplace climate, a weak talent retention policy, or a company culture that no longer meets employee expectations.

Combine turnover with other HR indicators

Turnover should never be interpreted in isolation. To understand the reasons for departures, compare it with complementary quantitative and qualitative indicators, such as absenteeism and employee engagement.

Internal surveys, quality of working life barometers, and psychosocial risk questionnaires can reveal what turnover alone cannot: a lack of recognition, loss of meaning, relationship difficulties, perceived unfairness, or excessive mental load.

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What are the main causes of high turnover?

Unsuitable management practices

Management directly influences employee retention. A lack of recognition, unrealistic objectives, insufficient communication, or excessive control can gradually damage the relationship between an employee and the company.

When these difficulties take hold, they affect the company’s workplace climate and increase the risk of departure. Conversely, management based on listening, trust, and clear objectives helps strengthen talent retention.

Unfavorable working conditions

Excessive workload, a lack of autonomy, demanding schedules, or poor work-life balance can encourage employees to look for another job.

Some company cultures even value constant availability and continually pushing oneself further. This hustle culture can fuel stress, fatigue, and disengagement.

Limited career prospects

An employee may enjoy their role but still decide to leave if they see no opportunity to progress.

Training, internal mobility, mentoring, and participation in new projects allow employees to develop their skills and envision a future within the organization. These initiatives also improve the employee experience, from onboarding through career development.

Fragile mental health and psychosocial risks

Chronic stress, mental overload, conflict, and harassment can undermine mental health. When the situation continues, leaving may become a way to protect oneself.

According to teale’s 2025 Employee Mental Health Barometer, 35% of employees surveyed had already considered leaving their company to protect their mental health.

High turnover can also occur alongside presenteeism, when employees remain at work despite declining health, or overwork.

How can you reduce turnover sustainably?

Improve quality of working life and working conditions

Quality of working life is built through concrete measures: a better distribution of workload, the right to disconnect, flexible schedules, improved tools, and employee participation in decisions.

The organization should select its well-being initiatives based on employees’ actual needs and then measure their effects over time. These initiatives contribute to happiness at work, engagement, and retention.

Strengthen employee engagement

To remain engaged, employees need to understand the meaning of their work, feel recognized, and have opportunities to grow.

Companies can act by communicating their strategy more clearly, recognizing contributions, and taking concrete action based on internal surveys. Listening without acting can instead fuel distrust.

Prevent psychosocial risks

Psychosocial risk prevention addresses stress, exhaustion, conflict, and loss of meaning. It should combine action on work organization, manager training, and individual support. Tracking the absenteeism rate can help identify a deteriorating situation.

How teale helps companies prevent high turnover

High turnover may reveal excessive workload, declining engagement, or a deteriorating workplace climate. teale helps companies measure these difficulties and act before they lead to departures.

Employees can assess their mental health, follow a personalized program, and access more than 1,500 pieces of content on stress, sleep, workplace relationships, and mental load.

They can also access confidential sessions with a psychologist or coach of their choice through a network of more than 150 professionals.

For HR teams, teale offers an aggregated and anonymized dashboard, manager training, prevention workshops, and quarterly reviews. These tools help identify risk factors, tailor actions, and sustainably improve team engagement.