Free tools · retention
The turnover rate itself takes ten seconds to work out. The number underneath it — how many of those leavers went inside their first 90 days — is the one that tells you where the problem actually is, so the calculator asks for both.
The calculator
Nothing is sent anywhere — the maths runs in your browser and we never see what you type. Every field starts at a deliberately ordinary default rather than a flattering one.
Before you quote the figure at anyone
01
A coastal or festival-driven operation running a Q4 rate against a Q2 rate is comparing two different businesses. Annualising makes periods comparable in arithmetic, not in trading conditions.
02
Two sites at 70% look identical and are not: one is churning new starters continuously, the other lost a settled team after a management change. The 90-day share and the voluntary split are what separate them.
03
A turnover percentage is not money, and boards fund money. The staff turnover cost calculator converts the same leaver count into advertising, manager hours, induction and lost output.
Questions
Getting a number you don’t recognise from your own accounts is usually worth a conversation rather than another spreadsheet.
Divide the number of leavers in a period by the average headcount over that period, then multiply by 100. Average headcount is the opening figure plus the closing figure divided by two. Twenty-one leavers against an average headcount of 39 is a 54% annual turnover rate.
UK hospitality routinely runs at 70-80% a year, which makes the sector average a very low bar rather than a target. Well-run operations get into the 30-50% range. The more diagnostic figure is what share of your leavers go inside their first 90 days.
Voluntary turnover is people choosing to leave; involuntary is dismissals and redundancies. They are worth separating because they have different causes and different fixes — a high voluntary rate points at management, progression and reward, while a high involuntary rate usually points at how you are recruiting and inducting people in the first place.
Multiply the rate for the period by twelve divided by the number of months in it. A quarter with 15% turnover is 60% annualised. Reporting a quarterly figure without annualising it is one of the most common ways a people report understates a problem by a factor of four.
Because an early leaver costs you everything a late leaver costs — advertising, manager hours, induction — and returns almost none of the productivity. It is also the part of the number management controls most directly: a structured induction that lasts twelve weeks rather than one shift moves it more reliably than any pay change.
WHY Hospitality