How to predict employee turnover: a comprehensive guide

Attracting and retaining top talent is time-consuming, expensive, and inherently difficult — especially with many industries facing critical skill gaps and labor shortages. These workforce constraints have led to declining employee tenure; one study found it has fallen by nearly 11% over the past decade.*

This talent crunch puts HR teams under pressure. In a recent SHRM study, 58% of surveyed People professionals reported that a lack of qualified candidates was their most significant hiring hurdle. Additionally, 78% of participants said that retaining top performers was a key concern in 2024.**

Given these challenges, today’s HR leaders need to understand why employees leave and how to prevent it proactively. Learning how to predict employee turnover is vital for identifying potential issues, strategizing retention efforts, and helping valuable team members stay engaged and committed.

🙌 Predict & prevent employee turnover 

Leapsome’s turnover prediction analysis tool helps you identify causes of churn — and reduce it. 

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*Lending Tree, 2023 

**SHRM, 2024

What are the underlying causes of employee turnover in 2025?

Employee turnover measures how many team members leave your company within a specific timeframe. You can break this data into voluntary turnover (employees who choose to leave) and involuntary turnover (employees who are let go). 

While some turnover is inevitable, HR teams want to keep it low to retain institutional knowledge, reduce hiring and training costs, and maintain cohesive, high-performing teams.

According to our 2024 Workforce Trends Report, the most common reasons for turnover include:

• Heavy workload
• Poor work-life balance
• Lack of career growth opportunities
• Inadequate pay 

Ultimately, any factor that negatively impacts someone’s job satisfaction or level of engagement can increase the risk of turnover.

💭 “In times of economic uncertainty, businesses may be tempted to reduce their investment in people-centric programs like skills training, coaching, and recognition. However, this short-sighted approach risks lowering engagement and increasing turnover.

Protecting your business during tough times also means retaining top performers and high-potential employees. These programs are vital to maintaining the talent necessary for long-term success.

HR leaders should adopt a holistic approach, aligning People programs with broader business goals while addressing employee needs. Prioritizing initiatives that foster stability, career growth, and manageable workloads helps keep employees engaged and drives overall business success.”

Luck Dookchitra, Leapsome’s VP of People & Culture

5 ways to predict employee turnover within your organization

All companies experience some churn, but these strategies can help you identify — and ultimately reduce — potential turnover risks.
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1. Use turnover prediction and analysis technology

Predictive analytics tools can forecast future turnover rates, helping you spot patterns and address problems before they escalate. 

For example, ​​Leapsome’s turnover prediction and analysis feature leverages the power of People analytics to enable HR teams to quickly sift through large data sets and identify the biggest retention wins and turnover risks.

As pictured above, People professionals can view their organization’s overall turnover rate, identify the percentage of employees at risk of churn, and compare different departments’ and teams’ expected turnover rates with the company average.

These insights empower you to act quickly to retain your best people and maintain a positive employee experience for everyone.

💡 The easiest way to estimate turnover is by leveraging an HR platform like Leapsome, but you can also do so manually. Our comprehensive guide on calculating employee turnover will teach you how!

2. Send regular engagement surveys (and take action on the results!)

While analytics tools can assess and visualize quantitative data in a way that’s easy to understand, it’s crucial to gather complementary qualitative information to get more context and nuance. Anonymous employee surveys allow you to investigate team members’ feelings around complex topics like PTO, job satisfaction, and manager relationships.

Consider questions such as:

• How would you rate your work-life balance on a scale of 1 to 10?
  
  
• What factors negatively impact your work-life balance?
  
  
• Do you have the training, resources, and support you need to excel?
  
  
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you feel about our time off policies?
  
  
• Do you feel that your compensation package is competitive?
  
  
• What additional benefits would you value?

Sending out regular surveys is a great way to monitor overall employee engagement rates. In particular, be sure to request feedback from team members who have recently undergone processes like onboarding, leadership training, a performance improvement plan, or an interview for an internal promotion.

Leapsome’s Surveys simplify collecting, interpreting, and acting on employee feedback. Its AI-powered analytics help you quickly identify themes and develop tailored solutions. By combining direct employee feedback with predictive analytics, you better understand what drives churn — and how to prevent it.

💡 Employee surveys are a powerful way to track and improve employee engagement over time. 

For more guidance, explore our guide to measuring engagement and our people enablement ROI calculator.

3. Encourage regular check-ins

Manager-employee relationships are often the frontline defense against turnover. Regular check-ins help managers spot early warning signs — like burnout or declining productivity — before they turn into resignations. Our 2024 Workforce Trends Report found that one in three employees want to quit their jobs, so prompt intervention is critical.

However, managers today face heavier workloads and more direct reports than ever, making it difficult to give each person the attention they need. Tools like Leapsome Meetings streamline the process: managers can automate recurring check-ins, access ready-to-use templates, create focused agendas, and assign actionable follow-ups. This sets the stage for more meaningful conversations that build trust and engagement.

To enhance managers’ skills, organizations can complement these efforts with targeted training through Leapsome Learning. By providing guidance on spotting early signs of disengagement or burnout and offering best practices for supporting team members, HR leaders can proactively empower managers to reduce turnover risks.

🙏 Retain top talent for the long haul

Leapsome’s turnover prediction and analysis tool helps HR teams track organizational turnover data, identify risks, and lower churn.

👉 Take a 5-min product tour

4. Conduct exit interviews to understand people’s reasons for leaving

While there may not be anything you can do to encourage someone to stay once they’ve decided to leave, you can use their resignation to identify factors that may cause other employees to leave, too. 

Exit interviews are critical to understanding what contributes to your organization’s turnover. While not everyone will be fully transparent, asking direct questions increases your chances of honest feedback. When carrying out an employee exit interview, consider asking:

• What factors led to your decision to leave?
  
  
• What motivated you to seek a new role elsewhere?
  
  
• How would you rate your experience with our company on a scale of 1 to 5? How could we improve that rating?
  
  
• Do you feel you had enough training and support to excel in your position?
  
  
• Did you feel acknowledged and valued by your manager and team? 

This information can highlight trends and guide you toward strategies that keep current employees engaged and happy.
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5. Foster a culture of continuous feedback 

To effectively predict employee turnover, you need a steady flow of honest input from your workforce. Even the most sophisticated analytics rely on the quality of your data; if employees don’t feel comfortable raising concerns, issues may only surface when it’s too late to prevent them from leaving.

While engagement surveys and regular check-ins are great starting points, an authentic culture of continuous feedback goes beyond scheduled conversations. It means creating an environment where sharing and requesting feedback is part of everyday work. This requires a strong foundation of psychological safety, where employees trust that their candor will be met with understanding, not retaliation.

Here are a few ways to encourage this environment:

• Encourage visible recognition — Set up a Praise Wall or dedicate a Slack channel so team members can easily celebrate each other’s contributions.
  
  
• Lead by example — Managers and executives should model open communication, actively seeking and giving feedback (both positive and constructive) in public forums.
  
  
• Support honesty and empathy — Establish company values that uplift honesty, effective communication, and empathy. Integrate these principles into onboarding, performance reviews, and team rituals to show that open dialogue isn’t just allowed — it’s expected and valued.

By normalizing continuous feedback and nurturing psychological safety, your organization will gain insight into emerging issues early on. This steady stream of honest feedback makes it easier to address potential turnover risks and strengthen engagement and retention proactively.
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Understanding and minimizing employee turnover with Leapsome

High turnover is costly. Beyond productivity dips and talent gaps, it drives up hiring, onboarding, and training expenses. Predicting turnover can help you pinpoint pain points and implement solutions that lead to long-term retention.

Leapsome’s comprehensive suite of tools — from Surveys to Learning — supports a healthier employee experience and can help improve employee retention. Our turnover prediction and analysis feature, in particular, taps into historical and real-time data to identify where and when you might see higher churn. With these insights, HR teams and managers can proactively address issues, resulting in happier, more engaged employees.

🛑 Stop employee turnover in its tracks

Leapsome’s turnover prediction and analysis tool can help you identify and address the root causes of churn before you lose top talent. 

👉 Book a demo

FAQs about predicting employee turnover

What’s the cost of employee turnover?

The average cost of turnover is 1.5-2x the employee’s annual salary. High turnover resulting from voluntary attrition can be costly for businesses, especially those struggling to manage recruiting, hiring, and training costs. 
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What’s the average employee turnover rate?

The average employee turnover rate varies significantly by industry, but it’s frequently cited as around 3.5%, though other data puts that number closer to around 10%. Specific sectors, like tech, retail, and hospitality, see even higher averages (around 11-13%). 

You can use People analytics to calculate your employee turnover and better understand key retention metrics. 

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