Is HR measuring staff turnover or leaving it too late?
Most HR leaders know turnover is expensive.
They measure the rate.
They conduct exit interviews.
They analyse why people leave.
But what if the biggest cost happens before the resignation?
I call it “gone time.”
It’s the period when an employee has mentally checked out but hasn’t physically left yet.
They may still be turning up.
Still doing their job.
Still being paid.
But discretionary effort has disappeared.
Productivity has declined.
The team can feel it.
Customer or guest experience can suffer.
And then eventually, they resign.
Only then do we conduct the exit interview and ask:
“Why did you leave?”
Isn’t that a little like investigating the cause of a fire after the building has burned down?
A CEO from a major finance company recently put it to me this way:
“Every time we lose a good employee, we don’t just lose a person. We lose productivity, knowledge, customer relationships and money. The question isn’t what turnover costs it’s why we’re accepting the cost as inevitable.”
Perhaps the bigger question for CEOs and CFOs isn’t:
“How many people did we lose?”
It’s:
“How much value did we lose before they actually left?”
And for HR:
Are we primarily measuring what happened or identifying the warning signs early enough to change what happens next?
Because an exit interview can explain the past.
The real opportunity may be understanding what is happening before the employee decides to leave.
That changes retention from an HR metric into a business performance conversation.
Maybe we shouldn’t be asking why people leave.
Maybe we should be asking what can we do to ensure they stay.
Do you have a plan in place to spot the issues before staff leave?
If not, why not?
If you don’t look after your staff and appreciate them, your competitors will.
#EmployeeRetention #StaffTurnover #Leadership #BusinessPerformance #WorkplaceCulture #BrowniePoints
