Turnover is the leak everyone tolerates because it never arrives as one invoice. This calculator prices each departure by role type, annualizes it, and separates the share you could actually prevent.
This tool produces planning estimates using published replacement-cost factor ranges. Actual costs vary by role, market, and how the separation and refill are handled.
A full itemized turnover model counts separation admin, vacancy drag, recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, ramp-up loss, and coverage. The reliable shortcut is salary times a role factor: 30% for entry roles up to 150% for executives. Published planning benchmarks commonly use this range, and it holds up in practice because the expensive parts scale with the role.
Not all turnover is a problem; some churn is healthy. The preventable share scales with the pattern: normal churn around 15%, supervisor-driven patterns around 35%, a role or team that repeatedly loses people around 50%, and known recurring exit reasons around 60% because the cause is already identified and unfixed.
One departure feels absorbable. Eight departures at $23,000 each is a $184,000 line item that would get immediate attention if it appeared on a budget. Annualizing is what turns turnover from an anecdote into a decision.
For deciding whether turnover deserves investment, yes. It tracks itemized models closely for typical roles. If a single critical departure is the question, itemize it: vacancy drag, recruiting, ramp-up, and coverage, each of which has its own calculator here.
Departures your organization could have kept with a reasonable, timely intervention: a pay correction, a supervisor fix, a role clarification, or a workload change. Retirement, relocation, and genuine career changes are not preventable, which is why even the highest pattern here caps at 60%.
That the cause is structural: the supervisor, the workload, the pay, or the role design. Concentrated turnover almost never fixes itself with better recruiting, because the next hire enters the same system.
Every departure creates a vacancy (vacancy drag), often overtime coverage (overtime leak), and sometimes a rushed replacement (bad-hire risk). The Payroll Leak Calculator stacks these so you can see the combined weight.
Book a no-cost 30-minute consult. Bring your result, and leave with a straight read on the risk and a practical next step.