diagnosis · evidence-based answer
What does employee turnover actually cost?
The short answer
Turnover is genuinely costly, but the widely-quoted multiples of salary travel without the assumptions that produced them, so treating one as a law is how business cases lose credibility. The real cost is a sum of components — separation, vacancy coverage, recruiting, onboarding, and the productivity ramp of the replacement — and it varies enormously by role, level, and tenure. A defensible number comes from your own inputs, which is what a calculator built on the component method gives you.
The problem underneath
The popular replace-costs-1.5-to-2x-salary figures are quoted without their assumptions; a leader building a business case needs a number grounded in their own roles and inputs, not a blog multiple.
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Related questions
- How much does it cost to replace an employee?
- Is employee turnover as expensive as people say?
Stop re-deriving this by hand. Turnover Cost — estimate it on your own numbers — Separation, vacancy, recruiting, onboarding, and ramp — computed from your inputs, not a headline multiple.