you're fired! i quit! (the thing about turnover)

kris at the HR capitalist posted a while back pointing to an article he'd written on good vs. bad turnover. as usual, kris has a good take on turnover. gautam ghosh puts a bit of a different twist on turnover that i like calling for "out of control turnover." but talk about "good" and "bad" turnover always makes me nervous. why? because all too often it leads to that river called denial.

i've seen companies use the good turnover explanation to turn 73% turnover into 8. seriously. from 73 to 8. too many times, we use good turnover as a way to explain away underlying issues. we say things like, "well, they had an opportunity to return to school. they found a job on another shift that works better for them, and we just weren't able to offer them that here at this time. they got a job closer to home." but do we stop to ask why those people were looking for those opportunities to begin with? if you're hearing more-than-usual rumblings of employees feeling unhappy, unappreciated, overworked, and underpaid and then are having a serious number of people leave for "better opportunities," it's time to marry that data and face the truth.

and what about the other kind of good turnover. you know what i'm talking about. "we really would have fired them eventually, but they quit just in time." those people. we're glad they're gone. they were under-performing or had an attitude or weren't a good fit. do we stop to ask why? did they get the training they needed? did we promote them to the point of failure? is your hiring process broken?

but here's the thing: at what point does saying "it's not that big of a loss" indicate that you really do not value your employees? is it okay if you could look at your org chart and put 30% of your employees in the "no big loss if they left" category? 40%? 50%?

we absolutely have to recognize that all turnover is not equal. but at what point do we stop accurately analyzing the data and drilling down to a problem we can fix versus explaining away something being rotten in Denmark?

what is behind the good turnover? is it truly good?
and what does your interpretation of the data say about your leaders?

all the best!
deb