Turnover in this industry is higher than in general employment and pretending otherwise helps nobody. What varies is how much higher, by role, and how much of it a client can affect.
The range, honestly
Frontline voice roles turn over fastest, specialised back-office roles slowest, and the gap between them is large. Any single figure for the industry conceals that spread, and a provider quoting one without breaking it down by role is quoting an average of unlike things.
Ask for it by role, and ask how it is calculated, for the reasons the entry on questions to ask sets out. The method changes the number substantially.
The two different attritions
Inside ninety days. Almost always a mismatch: the role was not what the person expected, the onboarding was poor, or the recruitment tested the wrong things. This is the kind a client influences most directly and the kind that indicates something fixable.
After a year. Usually pay, progression or a better offer. Different causes, different remedies, and mixing the two in one figure obscures both.
The season
Departures cluster in the first months of the calendar year, after the thirteenth month has been paid. It is a well-known pattern here and it is rational: leaving in November costs a month's salary and leaving in January does not.
Plan around it. A critical piece of work scheduled for February in a team that has been unsettled is a plan with a known risk in it.
What drives it
Pay, particularly where alternatives are within walking distance, which is why the entry comparing the cities treats attrition as the main practical difference between them. Shift patterns and commute. A ceiling with nothing above it. And, more than clients expect, the client.
The part that is yours
Roughly half, in our experience, and none of it costs money.
Whether the work is interesting or is the same task repeated without context. Whether the person is told what happened to what they produced. Whether corrections arrive as improvements or as complaints. Whether their questions get answered the same day. And whether they have any sense of what they are contributing to.
A person doing work they understand, for somebody who responds to them, stays substantially longer than a person doing the same work for somebody who does not. That is the entire lever and it is available to every client at no cost.
The warning you get
The monthly conversation, from the entry on cadence, is the only reliable one. Somebody thinking about leaving usually says something oblique about progression or about the work three months before they go.
Resignations that arrive without warning are usually resignations whose warning had nowhere to be said.
What it costs when it happens
Recruitment, a gap, a second onboarding, and the knowledge that left with the person. The first three are in the model from the entry on real cost; the fourth is the reason the entry on documentation is the most important one in this journal.
A team with current procedures loses a fortnight. A team without loses a quarter.
What not to do
Treat a resignation as a betrayal. People change jobs, it is a functioning labour market doing what one does, and a client who takes it personally makes the handover worse for everybody including themselves.
Measuring your own
Ask the provider for the attrition figure on your account specifically, annually, and compare it with their overall number. If yours is worse, the causes are likely to be on your side and the list above is where to look.
Almost no client asks for this and it is available for the asking.