HR professionals understand employee turnover better than most people — and not just because their jobs concern the talent lifecycle of all employees.
That’s because HR itself has the highest turnover rate of any job function, according to LinkedIn’s latest behavioral data from around the world.
Globally, HR had a turnover rate of almost 15% over the last 12 months. The overall average turnover rate was about 11%, which means that turnover in HR was over 35% above average, proportionally speaking.
Turnover in any department can be stressful — but being prepared can help you set expectations and plan ahead, whether you’re a recruiter sourcing candidates, an HR pro battling attrition, or a leader looking to step up your workforce planning.
That’s why we decided to look at LinkedIn data to understand which functions had the highest and lowest turnover rates. Read on to see how turnover compares across 13 functions, after a quick word about what this data represents.
What does “turnover rate” mean exactly?
For the purpose of this analysis, an organization’s turnover rate is calculated as the number of total departures over the past year, divided by the average number of employees in that same timeframe. The data is drawn from members updating their current employer on their LinkedIn profile.
For that reason, you can take the absolute numbers in this story with a grain of salt: The rates reported here may be below actual turnover, due to a lag between someone’s actual departure and when they update their profile.
The data here is still drawn from hundreds of millions of members and reveals meaningful patterns; it’s just that they are best understood directionally, rather than absolutely. See the methodology at the end for more details.
Now, without further ado, here are the job functions with the highest and lowest turnover rates.
HR tops the list of functions with the highest turnover
Across all functions, HR has consistently had some of the highest turnover, ranking among the top three functions over the past three years.
It’s a bit counterintuitive that HR professionals — the people most concerned with retention and turnover — are also the most likely to leave.
Recent years have been particularly volatile for talent professionals, with demand for recruiters seesawing from a precipitous fall to a sustained spike.
More broadly, all HR professionals get an inside perspective on how their company treats employees; perhaps that makes them quicker to spot and step away from a dysfunctional company culture.
Low turnover roles tend to be more technical
The function with the least amount of turnover was administration, with a rate just below 8%. Proportionally speaking, that’s over 25% lower than the average rate of about 11%.
Interestingly, these low turnover functions deal more with rigid institutional systems: budgets, regulations, business cycles, etc. Conversely, most of the high turnover functions feel more consultative, interpretive, or interpersonal. Rather than dealing primarily with fixed systems, they focus more on emotions, understanding, and strategic decisions.
The most sought-after functions fall somewhere in the middle
The three functions that tend to get the most InMails from recruiters on LinkedIn are engineering, sales, and IT — in that order.
Of the three, engineering has the highest turnover rate at 11.5%, narrowly missing the cutoff of the high turnover list.
The turnover rates for sales roles and IT roles were nearly the same as the overall average of 10.6% — with 10.8% turnover for sales and 10.6% turnover for IT jobs.
Somewhat similar to the low turnover roles, these functions tend to be more “always on” than those with the high turnover rates. HR and marketing might be more volatile or vulnerable to changes in a company’s business model or market — say, amid a hiring freeze/spree or a major marketing campaign.
What really distinguishes these roles from the other low turnover roles — and the reason they have higher turnover — may be demand. Since engineering, sales, and IT candidates are the most sought after, that also means there are more opportunities for them to leave for greener pastures.
Final thoughts
These trends can point you in the right direction in terms of setting expectations and seeing how your company differs from broad benchmarks. That said, in terms of taking action, it’s far more important to know the specific turnover rates within your own company. Learn more about identifying, measuring, and acting on people analytics metrics here.
Methodology
In conversation, attrition and turnover are often used interchangeably — but as technical terms in workforce planning, they often have distinct definitions.
For many in talent analytics, attrition happens when an employee leaves (for whatever reason) and their vacancy isn’t intended to be filled. Turnover, on the other hand, happens when an employee leaves voluntarily and the employer needs to fill that vacancy with a new hire. The distinction often rests on that employer’s intention — whether to fill the vacancy or eliminate it altogether.
However, this data doesn’t allow us to see whether a company intends to fill a vacancy or not after someone leaves. In LinkedIn Talent Insights and in this analysis, attrition is defined as “the number of professionals who departed the company in the past 12 months divided by the average number of employees during this period.” That’s precisely the calculation many professionals use to define turnover. For that reason, we use turnover and attrition interchangeably in this analysis.
Data in this story ranges from July 2021 to June 2022. The turnover estimates may be below actual turnover, due to a possible lag between the time someone leaves a company and when they update their LinkedIn profile to reflect that departure.
We consider professionals as leaving their position if they provide an end date for their position at a company (excluding internal job changes within the same company). A member can have multiple departures and positions within the year period. We’ve also excluded contractors and other employees who are not full time (interns, students, etc.), along with any positions that start and end on the same date.
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