Employers know that employee turnover is expensive—but they may not know quite how expensive.

HRDive reports that it can cost 33 percent of an employee’s salary to replace him once he’s bailed from the job. Someone making a median salary of $45,000 a year, in other words, will cost his former company $15,000 to find a replacement.

And those bosses have nobody to blame but themselves, according to the Work Institute’s 2017 Retention Report, which says that 75 percent of the causes of employee turnover are preventable.

HR Dive also cites a separate Willis Tower Watson survey that determined one out of every three hires will leave a job within two years; that puts the pressure on employers to get someone back into the position quickly and just eat the costs connected with the search.

The report highlights to the survey’s conclusion: “employers might want to focus on shaping the workplace to fit the best hires instead of selecting people that fit the workplace.”

One big driver of employee departures is dissatisfaction with career development. Increasingly, employers are using employee learning programs as a means of both keeping workers on the job and boosting the quality of their workforce.

Another reason people aren’t happy with the jobs they have are job responsibilities that just don’t meet expectations—once workers realize the job is never going to be what they want it to be, they look elsewhere.

To avoid that, employers need to do their best to depict jobs accurately in employment listings and the recruiting process, so that candidates aren’t given unrealistic expectations.

Exit interviews can be helpful to find out exactly why employees leave, so that employers can address any shortcomings that don’t lie with the departing worker.

In exit interviews, according to the report, the top reasons given by respondents for leaving their jobs were career development (22 percent), work-life balance (12 percent), managers' behavior (11 percent), compensation and benefits (9 percent) and well-being (9 percent).

Another suggestion made by the report is to allow employees to create networks and make referrals. Doing so can create talent pipelines that can help cut down on recruiting and hiring time.

Instant Insights /

Employers lose a third of departing employees&rsquo; salaries to hire replacements

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Employers lose a third of departing employees’ salaries to hire replacements