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The High Cost of Employee Turnover in Business

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When accounting for the costs (both real costs, such as time taken to select and recruit a replacement, and also opportunity costs, such as lost productivity), the cost of employee turnover to for-profit organizations has been estimated to be between 30% (the figure used by the American Management Association) to upwards of 150% of the employees' remuneration package.[4] There are both direct and indirect costs. Direct costs relate to the leaving costs, replacement costs and transitions costs, and indirect costs relate to the loss of production, reduced performance levels, unnecessary overtime and low morale. The true cost of turnover is going to depend on a number of variable including ease or difficulty in filling the position and the nature of the job itself. In a healthcare context, staff turnover has been associated with worse patient outcomes.[5] Internal versus external[edit] Like recruitment, turnover can be classified as "internal" or "external".[6] Internal turnover involves employees leaving their current positions and taking new positions within the same organization. Both positive (such as increased morale from the change of task and supervisor) and negative (such as project/relational disruption, or the Peter Principle) effects of internal turnover exist, and therefore, it may be equally important to monitor this form of turnover as it is to monitor its external counterpart. Internal turnover might be moderated and controlled by typical HR mechanisms, such as

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