Employee turnover isn’t only disruptive. It also can be expensive, a survey confirms. Forty-five percent of 206 medium to large U.S. companies report that turnover costs them more than $10,000 per employee who must be replaced, according to a survey conducted by New York City-based William M. Mercer Inc. One-fifth of the respondents peg such costs at more than $30,000.
Asked to identify the two groups with the highest turnover, 38 percent of the participating company executives identified technology workers and 35 percent identified administrative workers. Among employees with the lowest turnover rates are those in management (according to 49 percent of survey participants) and professional (32 percent) positions.
For employee groups with the highest turnover rates, dissatisfaction over compensation was identified (by 59 percent of responding executives) as the major reason for employees leaving. Other often-cited causes were unhappiness with “job fit,” the culture of the company or manager-employee relations.
Workforce, July 1998, Vol. 77, No. 7, p. 19.