Calculators
Employee Turnover Cost Calculator
Calculate the turnover rate and the cost of staff turnover from recruiting, onboarding and lost productivity.
- Runs in your browser
- Nothing uploaded
The tool
Enter your numbers below. Results update as you type, and nothing leaves your browser.
Everything you enter stays on your own machine. Nothing is sent to us or to anyone else, which you can confirm in your browser network tab.
What people use it for
- Making the case for retention initiatives
- HR budgeting
- Board reporting on people metrics
- Comparing teams
About this tool
What the Employee Turnover Cost Calculator does
Each employee who leaves triggers recruiting costs, onboarding and training for the replacement, and a period of lower productivity while the role is vacant and the new person ramps up. This calculator totals those costs per leaver and across a year of turnover.
It also works as a turnover cost calculator.
Formula
- Vacancy cost = salary ÷ 52 × weeks vacant
- Ramp-up cost = salary ÷ 12 × months × productivity lost
- Cost per leaver = recruiting + onboarding + vacancy + ramp-up
- Turnover rate = leavers ÷ average headcount
Worked example
Using the starting values in the calculator above:
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Average headcount | 120 |
| Leavers per year | 18 |
| Average salary | $55,000 |
| Recruiting cost per hire | $4,000 |
| Onboarding and training per hire | $3,000 |
| Weeks the role is vacant | 6 |
| Months to full productivity | 3 |
| Average productivity lost during ramp-up | 50% |
| Result | Value |
|---|---|
| Annual cost of turnover | $363,981 |
| Cost per leaver | $20,221 |
| Turnover rate | 15.0% |
| Cost as share of salary | 36.8% |
How to read the result
Vacancy cost uses salary as a proxy for the value of the work; for revenue-generating roles the real cost is often higher.
A small improvement in retention usually pays for engagement and development programmes several times over.
Related calculators
- Hiring Timeline Calculator: Plan a hiring timeline stage by stage, with time to fill, time to start and the expected start date.
- Salary Benchmarking Calculator: Compare a salary with market percentiles to find its compa-ratio, approximate percentile and gap to the median.
- Compensation Band Builder: Build salary bands from a midpoint, range spread and progression between grades, with minimum, quartiles and maximum.
- Pay Gap Calculator: Calculate unadjusted mean and median pay gaps between employee groups and a reference group.
Browse every calculator in HR and Payroll Calculators, or talk to us about HR and payroll workflow automation.
More tools and services
- 1031 Exchange Calculator
- 401(k) Contribution Optimizer
- 529 College Savings Calculator
- A/B Test Significance Calculator
- Accessible Ramp Calculator
- Accounts Payable Aging Calculator
If you would rather someone did this properly for you, we offer Web Design Services and Website Development, SEO Services: Search Engine Optimization, AI Automation Agency.
Questions
Questions about this tool
The things clients actually want to know — costs, timelines, ownership and what happens after launch.
Estimates commonly range from a fraction to a multiple of annual salary, depending on role complexity.
Divide leavers in a period by the average headcount in that period.
Recruiting, onboarding, vacancy and the time new hires take to reach full productivity.
Free strategy session
Let’s build something worth finding.
Tell us where you want the business to be in twelve months. We will come back with a costed plan, a realistic timeline, and the numbers we expect to move — no obligation, no jargon.
- 30-minute call, no pitch deck
- Fixed-price proposal in 48 hours
- You own everything we build
Talk to a developer
Not a sales team
- Response time
- Within 1 business hour
- Where we work
- UK, USA & the Gulf
- Contracts
- No lock-in, monthly rolling
- Working since
- 2023