Employee Turnover Rate
Employees who left ÷ Average headcount × 100
Turnover rate
The share of your workforce that left during the period.
Free Tool
Type in how many people left and your average headcount. You get your turnover rate straight away. Below it: the formula, a worked example, and how to get the inputs right.
Employees who left ÷ Average headcount × 100
The share of your workforce that left during the period.
The Formula
Turnover rate = employees who left during the period ÷ average headcount for the period × 100.
Choose a month, a quarter or a year. Use the same period for both numbers, and keep it the same every time you report so the results compare.
Count everyone who left during the period: resignations, dismissals, redundancies and retirements. Decide up front whether casuals and fixed-term contracts that end on schedule are in or out, and stick to it.
Add your headcount at the start of the period to your headcount at the end, then divide by 2. For a year, you get a more accurate figure by averaging the 12 month-end headcounts.
Divide the number who left by the average headcount, then multiply by 100 to get a percentage. The calculator above does this step for you.
Worked Example
A business starts the year with 78 employees and ends it with 82. During the year, 12 people leave.
(78 + 82) ÷ 2 = 80
12 ÷ 80 × 100 = 15%
Over the year, the business lost people equal to 15% of its average workforce. Press Try an example on the calculator to see the same numbers.
Getting It Right
Use everyone who left in the 12 months, divided by the average of the 12 month-end headcounts. This is the figure most boards and benchmarks use.
Adding up 12 monthly turnover rates gives you a close estimate of the annual rate, as long as headcount did not swing a lot during the year.
To project a full year from part of one, divide the year-to-date rate by the number of months so far and multiply by 12. Treat it as a forecast, not a result.
Split leavers into people who chose to go and people you asked to leave. A rise in voluntary turnover usually points at pay, management or culture. A rise in involuntary turnover often points at hiring.
Common Questions
There is no single good number. Turnover varies a lot by industry, role type and the stage your business is at. Hospitality and retail run far higher than professional services, and a fast-growing team usually loses more people than a stable one.
The most useful comparison is your own rate over time, next to figures for your industry. A sudden rise, or one team well above the rest, tells you more than any benchmark.
Yes. If more people leave during the period than your average headcount, the rate goes above 100%. It happens in roles with high churn, where a position is filled and left several times in one year. The calculator allows it for that reason.
Turnover counts everyone who left during the period, including people you hired and lost in the same period. Retention only looks at the people you started with and asks how many are still there at the end.
That is why retention is not simply 100% minus turnover. Tracking both shows whether you are losing long-serving staff or new starters. Our retention rate calculator works out the other half.
Track it monthly so you see changes early, and report a rolling 12-month rate so one busy month does not distort the picture. Split it by team, manager or length of service when you can. The overall number tells you there is a problem. The split tells you where.
The number tells you people are leaving. We help you find out why, and fix it. Or try our other 14 free HR calculators.
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