Staff turnover isn't one simple idea. It’s made up of different types of employee departures, and each tells a different story about your company's health.
Here's a quick rundown of the concepts you need.
Key Turnover Concepts at a Glance
| Concept | What It Measures | Why It Matters for Tech Teams |
|---|---|---|
| Total Turnover | All employees who left the company for any reason (voluntary, involuntary, retirement). | Gives a broad overview of churn but can be misleading. A high total rate might be from a planned restructuring, not a cultural problem. |
| Voluntary Turnover | Employees who chose to leave, such as for a new job or personal reasons. | This is the important one. High voluntary turnover often points to problems like poor management, burnout, or uncompetitive pay. |
| Involuntary Turnover | Employees who were asked to leave through termination or layoffs. | A spike here could suggest hiring process issues (bad fits) or business challenges that forced redundancies. |
| Attrition | When an employee leaves and their position is not filled. This happens through retirement or role elimination. | Can signal strategic shifts or budget cuts. It’s different from turnover because you are not trying to replace the person who left. |
Understanding these differences is the first step. It helps you move past a single, scary turnover number and start asking the right questions about why people are really leaving.
A Practical Guide to Calculating Staff Turnover Rate
Calculating your staff turnover rate is simple arithmetic. Getting the definitions right is what turns a number into a useful insight.
The standard formula is:
(Total Departures ÷ Average Number of Employees) x 100 = Staff Turnover Rate %
This equation gives you a percentage showing what proportion of your workforce left during a certain period. The trick is being consistent about what counts as a ‘departure’ and how you calculate your ‘average number of employees’.
Defining the Formula's Components
First, let’s be clear on what a departure is. This number should include anyone who has permanently left the company payroll.
- Include: People who resigned voluntarily and those who were let go for performance or redundancy.
- Exclude: Anyone moving inside the company, like through internal transfers or promotions. Also exclude people on temporary leave, like for parental or medical reasons. They’re still part of the team.
Next is the average number of employees. You can’t just grab the headcount from the last day of the month because that number fluctuates. To get a true average, you add the number of employees at the start of the period to the number at the end, then divide by two.
For instance, if you started a quarter with 48 employees and finished with 52, your average is (48 + 52) ÷ 2 = 50 employees.
Putting It All Together: A Worked Example
Let’s run the numbers for a fictional tech team. Imagine an engineering department began the year with 50 developers. By the end of the year, that number had grown to 60. Over that same year, six developers left.
- Calculate the average number of employees: (50 at the start + 60 at the end) ÷ 2 = 55
- Identify total departures: 6 developers left.
- Apply the formula: (6 departures ÷ 55 average employees) x 100 = 10.9%
The annual staff turnover rate for this department is 10.9%. Now you have a concrete figure you can work with. Measuring this consistently shows the real story of your team's stability. You can learn more in our complete guide to the labour turnover rate.
Choosing the Right Timeframe
How often should you calculate this? It depends on your goal.
- Monthly: Good for catching sudden spikes. The downside is it can be jumpy. One person leaving a small team can make the percentage look alarmingly high.
- Quarterly: This is a good balance for many teams. It smooths out monthly blips and gives a clearer picture of trends, giving you enough time to react.
- Annually: Best for the big picture. Use this for strategic planning and comparing your performance against industry benchmarks, which are almost always reported yearly.
What a Good Staff Turnover Rate Actually Looks Like
You’ve calculated your staff turnover rate. Now what? The first question is, “Is this good?”
The honest answer: that number means almost nothing on its own.
A “good” staff turnover rate doesn’t exist in a vacuum. What’s healthy in one industry could be a disaster in another. Your goal isn't to hit a universal magic number, but to figure out what your rate is telling you about your company and your market.
The calculation itself is simple. It's the relationship between people who leave and the size of your team over time.
This formula is a starting point. Real insights come when you add context.
Using Benchmarks as a Guide, Not a Rule
Industry benchmarks help you get your bearings. They show if your turnover rate is normal for your sector or if it’s an outlier.
For tech companies in the Netherlands, the picture is stable. The Dutch tech sector has one of the lowest attrition rates in Europe, at 14% as of late 2025. While that’s a 14% increase from 2024, it’s still below the European average of 17.4%.
This suggests Dutch firms are handling post-pandemic churn better than their neighbours in the UK (19%) or Germany (18%). For more details, check the employee retention report from Ravio.
Turnover Rate Benchmarks for European Tech Sectors
Here’s how attrition compares across a few European tech hubs. This helps gauge whether your team’s turnover follows market trends or if something specific is happening in your company.
| Country | Tech Attrition Rate (2025) | Year-over-Year Change |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 19.0% | +16% |
| Germany | 18.0% | +13% |
| European Average | 17.4% | +15% |
| Netherlands | 14.0% | +14% |
| France | 13.5% | +11% |
While these benchmarks provide a snapshot, your own historical data is just as important. A slow increase in your turnover rate over several quarters reveals more than a single number. It points to a systemic issue.
Not All Turnover Is the Same
A raw turnover percentage lumps every departure together. To get a clear picture, you have to break the data down.
Voluntary vs. Involuntary: Did they choose to leave, or were they let go? A spike in voluntary turnover often signals internal problems—poor management, bad culture, or burnout. High involuntary turnover might point to a flawed hiring process.
Regrettable vs. Non-Regrettable: This is the big one. Was the person who left a star performer whose absence will be felt? Or was it someone whose departure doesn't harm the team’s momentum? Losing your lead architect is a crisis; losing a consistent underperformer is just business.
This distinction is the most practical step you can take. Focus your retention efforts on keeping your "regrettable" departures. That's where you'll see the biggest return.
By segmenting the data, you can spot the real problems. You might find your overall turnover rate looks healthy, but the voluntary, regrettable turnover within your senior engineering team is through the roof.
Suddenly, a vague metric becomes an actionable problem. It tells you exactly where to dig.
Finding the Real Reasons People Are Leaving
Your staff turnover rate is a symptom, not the disease. A high number is a flashing red light. It tells you something’s wrong, but it doesn’t tell you what. To fix the problem, you need to find out why people are walking out the door.
In tech, it's easy to guess: burnout, a dead-end career path, a bad manager, or uncompetitive salary. But guessing isn’t a diagnosis. You need a system to pinpoint the specific issues.
Getting Honest Feedback
The traditional exit interview is usually too little, too late. By the time someone is leaving, they have little reason to be completely honest, especially if they want a good reference. The feedback you get is often polite, filtered, and not very useful.
To get closer to the truth, use different tools.
- Anonymous Surveys: Quarterly pulse surveys can help you catch bad sentiment before it turns into a resignation. Ask direct questions about workload, management support, and career opportunities. Anonymity must be genuine; if people don't trust it, they won't be candid.
- Stay Interviews: Instead of asking people why they're leaving, ask your best performers why they stay. It’s a proactive way to learn what you’re doing right. A question like, "What might make you consider looking for another job?" can reveal hidden problems.
- Structured Exit Interviews: If you stick with exit interviews, make them count. Use the same set of questions for everyone who leaves and have a neutral third party, like someone from HR, run the meeting. This reduces manager bias and helps you spot trends.
A common mistake is seeing every departure as a one-off event. Aggregate the feedback. When three engineers from the same team all mention a lack of mentorship in their exit interviews, you have a data point, not an opinion.
Reading the Digital Signals
Sometimes, the most honest feedback is what people do, not what they say. Behavioral data, collected ethically, can show early warning signs of burnout or disengagement.
Privacy-first endpoint analytics can show you patterns that often correlate with a higher staff turnover rate.
- Increased Context Switching: Is an engineer constantly jumping between their IDE, Slack, and Jira? They’re probably struggling with interruptions and can't get into a state of deep focus. This is a classic recipe for burnout.
- Consistently Long Hours: When data shows people regularly working late or on weekends, you have an indicator of an unsustainable workload. It's not a sign of dedication; it's a cry for help.
- Application Underutilisation: If analytics show a new tool is barely being used, that could point to a training gap or a clunky process creating more friction than it removes.
These digital signals are objective evidence. Combine them with qualitative feedback from interviews and surveys, and you get a much clearer picture. This data-driven approach is part of effective human resource analytics, helping you act before a small issue becomes another resignation.
Your staff turnover rate is shaped by the wider economic landscape. In the Netherlands, the labour market currently gives employees a lot of leverage. Understanding these external pressures is necessary for realistic workforce planning.
A tight labour market with low unemployment drives up salaries and benefits. When skilled professionals, especially in tech, know they can easily find another job, they're less likely to tolerate poor management, a dead-end career, or a bad work environment.
A Shift Towards Stability
Recently, a new trend has started. Despite the tight market, there's a growing preference for job security. In the Netherlands, staff turnover has declined, showing a shift towards stability in the face of economic uncertainty.
According to Statistics Netherlands (CBS), only 305 thousand workers changed employers in the second quarter of 2025. That's just 3.8% of all employed people—a drop from previous years. This is especially true for those with permanent contracts; 62% of employees who switched jobs were on flexible contracts, while only 38% had permanent ones. You can find more on recent labour market trends at Adams Recruitment.
This presents a paradox for employers.
While finding and hiring new talent remains difficult, the people you already have are more inclined to stay put—if you give them good reasons. They're prioritising stability, which creates an opportunity for companies that get retention right.
The Strategic Takeaway
For finance and operations leaders, these market conditions have direct implications. The cost of replacing someone is inflated by competition for talent. At the same time, data shows that employees in secure roles are more hesitant to leave than they were a few years ago.
This builds a clear business case for investing in your current team. The macro trends confirm it: keeping the talent you have is cheaper and more strategically sound than constantly fighting in a tough hiring market. Your retention efforts have a much higher chance of success now than they did when job-hopping was the norm.
Actionable Strategies to Reduce Staff Turnover
Knowing why people leave is one thing. Giving them reasons to stay is another. To lower your staff turnover rate, you need to take concrete actions that get to the root of the problem.
For tech teams, that means focusing on career momentum, good management, and feeling valued. These are operational necessities for building a stable organization.
Refine Your Onboarding Experience
The first 90 days can make or break an employee’s journey. A chaotic onboarding process makes new hires second-guess their decision and slows down their time to productivity.
A structured process helps them feel competent and connected.
Instead of drowning them in documents, create a phased plan:
- Week 1: Focus on setting up tools, introducing them to the team, and explaining the workflow. Assign them a buddy to answer the "stupid" questions.
- Month 1: Set clear, achievable goals. Schedule regular check-ins with their manager to clear any roadblocks.
- Quarter 1: Widen their exposure to other teams and longer-term project goals. This helps them see how their work fits into the bigger picture.
Build Clear and Achievable Career Paths
"Lack of growth" is a top reason people quit tech jobs. If your engineers can't see what's next for them, they'll look for it somewhere else. Vague promises don't work—you need a documented framework.
A well-defined career path is an internal retention tool. It shows your team you are invested in their long-term success, not just their output this quarter.
For a software developer, this might be a progression from Junior to Mid-level to Senior, with specific criteria for each step.
| Level | Key Responsibilities | Technical Skills Required |
|---|---|---|
| Junior Dev | Fixes bugs, writes small features with supervision. | Proficient in one language, basic Git usage. |
| Mid-Level Dev | Owns medium-sized features, mentors juniors. | Designs components, writes thorough tests. |
| Senior Dev | Leads architectural decisions, manages technical debt. | Deep expertise in system design, cross-team influence. |
Invest Heavily in Management Training
People leave managers, not companies. A good job can be ruined by a manager who micromanages, communicates poorly, or fails to support their team. Promoting your best engineer into a management role without proper training is a classic way to increase your staff turnover rate.
Effective management training should be practical. Focus on core skills like giving constructive feedback, running useful one-on-one meetings, and shielding the team from unnecessary corporate noise. This is a direct investment in keeping your people.
This practical guide on how to reduce employee turnover offers more insights for tech leaders. Building a solid employee value proposition model is another key piece of this puzzle.
The pressure to get this right is increased by labour shortages. In the Netherlands, employers face acute staffing deficits. Almost 50% of flexible staffing firms reported a lack of internal teams and temporary workers in Q3 2025. This squeeze makes holding on to your current team more critical than ever. You can read more in the ING Think staffing sector outlook.
Common Questions About Staff Turnover
Once you start measuring your turnover rate, you'll find that the numbers raise more questions. That's a good thing. It means you're digging deeper. Let's tackle a few of the most common ones that pop up right after the initial calculations are done.
How Often Should We Calculate Our Staff Turnover Rate?
For most tech teams, tracking this quarterly is the sweet spot. It's often enough to catch trends before they become major problems and see if your retention efforts are actually working. Monthly tracking can make you jumpy, overreacting to small blips that don't mean much in the grand scheme of things.
You'll still want to run the numbers annually, though. An annual calculation gives you that big-picture view for strategic planning and lets you compare your performance against industry benchmarks, which are almost always reported yearly.
Is All Staff Turnover Bad for a Company?
Not at all. Some turnover is healthy—even necessary. When a consistent underperformer decides to move on, it’s not a loss; it’s an opportunity. You get a chance to bring in someone with fresh skills, a different perspective, or a better cultural fit.
The goal isn't to get turnover down to zero. That's impossible and, frankly, not even desirable. The real focus should be on minimising regrettable turnover—that's when you lose the high-performers and high-potential people you really can't afford to lose. A certain amount of natural churn is just part of a healthy, evolving organisation.
The key is distinguishing between losing a key contributor and creating a healthy opening for new talent. One is a problem to be solved; the other is an opportunity to be seized.
What Is the Difference Between Turnover and Attrition?
People throw these terms around interchangeably, but they describe two very different situations.
Turnover is essentially a revolving door. An employee leaves—whether they quit or were let go—and you fully intend to hire someone to fill that same position.
Attrition, on the other hand, is a closed door. An employee leaves, and the position is permanently removed from the books. This is what happens during a strategic headcount reduction, when a role becomes redundant, or when someone retires and their job isn't replaced.
Getting these details right helps you manage your team much more effectively. WhatPulse gives you the privacy-first analytics to spot the early warning signs of burnout and disengagement, helping you get ahead of regrettable turnover before it’s too late. See how your teams really work.
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