Employee Turnover Cost Calculator
An employee turnover cost calculator reveals what attrition really costs. Enter your headcount, turnover rate, average salary and replacement cost to see the total annual turnover cost, how many people you lose, and the cost of each departure.
Typically 33%–150% of salary: hiring, onboarding and lost productivity.
At a glance
How the employee turnover cost calculator works
- 1 Enter your total headcount and annual turnover rate.
- 2 Add the average salary of the roles that turn over.
- 3 Set the replacement cost as a percentage of salary (recruiting, onboarding, ramp-up, lost output).
- 4 The calculator multiplies it out to the full annual cost of attrition.
Leavers = Employees × Turnover rate. Cost per departure = Average salary × Replacement %. Total cost = Leavers × Cost per departure.
Worked example
A 300-person company loses 18% of its staff in a year. Average salary is 55,000, and replacing someone costs roughly a third of their annual pay once recruitment fees, manager time, onboarding and lost productivity are counted.
- ·Employees: 300
- ·Annual turnover: 18%
- ·Average salary: 55,000
- ·Replacement cost: 33% of salary
- 1. Departures a year = 300 × 18% = 54 people
- 2. Cost of one departure = 55,000 × 33% = 18,150
- 3. Total annual cost = 54 × 18,150 = 980,100
- 4. Monthly run rate = 980,100 ÷ 12 = 81,675
54 departures a year costing 980,100 — about 81,675 every month.
Nearly a million a year, and none of it appears as a line item anywhere in the accounts, which is why turnover is chronically under-invested against. The useful comparison is direct: a retention programme costing 150,000 only has to cut turnover from 18% to about 15.3% to break even. Framed that way the decision usually looks obvious.
Frequently asked questions
How do you calculate the cost of employee turnover?
Multiply the number of employees who leave by the cost to replace each one. Replacement cost is usually estimated as a percentage of annual salary — commonly 33% for entry roles and up to 150%+ for senior or specialised roles — covering recruiting, onboarding and lost productivity.
What is included in turnover cost?
Recruiting and advertising, recruiter and manager time, onboarding and training, reduced productivity while the role is vacant and while the new hire ramps up, and the knowledge that walks out the door.
What is a good employee turnover rate?
It depends on industry, but 10% or below annually is generally considered healthy. Rates above 20% usually signal engagement, compensation or management issues worth investigating.
How can I reduce turnover cost?
Lowering the turnover rate has the biggest impact — through better hiring fit, onboarding, engagement and career growth. HR software helps by surfacing attrition risk early and improving the employee experience.
What percentage of salary does replacing someone really cost?
It varies with seniority far more than any single figure admits. Commonly cited ranges run from roughly a third of annual salary for junior and high-volume roles up to one and a half to two times salary for senior, specialist or hard-to-fill positions. If your workforce spans both, run the calculation separately for each band — a blended average understates the cost of losing your most experienced people.
What goes into the cost of one departure?
Four groups. Direct recruitment: advertising, agency fees, assessments. Internal time: the hours managers and interviewers spend, usually the largest hidden component. Onboarding and ramp: training plus the gap between a new hire salary and their early output. And productivity lost while the seat is empty, including the load on colleagues covering the work.
Is all turnover a cost to be eliminated?
No. Some turnover is healthy — it brings in new skills, creates promotion paths and moves out poor fits. What this measures is the total replacement bill, not a target of zero. The number to attack is regretted attrition: the people you wanted to keep. Splitting voluntary from involuntary, and regretted from not, tells you how much of the total is actually addressable.
How does this relate to the attrition rate calculator?
They answer different halves of the same question. The attrition rate calculator gives the percentage using average headcount, which is the right denominator when the company is growing or shrinking. This one converts a rate into money. Work out the rate first, then bring it here to see what it costs.