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Reduce staff turnover by better understanding why employees leave
Staff turnover rarely occurs due to a single incident. Often, doubts build up slowly: employees lack perspective, feel unheard, experience poor connection with their manager, or see no future within the organization.
With Deepler’s turnover module, you investigate which signals precede turnover intentions. This way, you don’t just manage outflow figures in hindsight, but discover earlier where employees disengage and what’s needed to retain staff.
- Discover why employees hesitate to stay
- Recognize patterns behind unwanted staff turnover
- Translate turnover intention into concrete retention actions
Reduce staff turnover: how do you retain employees?
Many organizations only notice turnover when someone hands in their resignation. By then, the conversation is often too late.
To retain staff, you need to understand earlier where doubt, distance, or turnover intention arises. That requires more than an exit interview. By regularly asking employees about commitment, perspective, leadership, and work experience, you gain insight into the causes of staff turnover before knowledge, expertise, and capacity disappear.
In this article, we explain:
- What staff turnover is and when it becomes a problem
- Why employees leave or stay
- How you can reduce staff turnover
- What role exit interviews and retention policies play
- How Deepler helps to retain staff sustainably
Table of contents
What is staff turnover?
Staff turnover means that employees leave the organization and must be replaced by new employees. Part of this is normal and sometimes even healthy.
It only becomes a problem when valuable employees leave, teams continuously lose knowledge, or vacancies arise faster than they can be filled. Then turnover is not just about numbers, but about continuity, workload, culture, and customer quality. A turnover survey therefore doesn’t just look at who leaves, but especially why employees experience less commitment and what factors influence their choice to stay.
Voluntary and unwanted turnover
Not every departure has the same meaning. Voluntary turnover occurs when employees decide to leave.
Unwanted turnover concerns employees you would have liked to retain. That’s the group that’s interesting to research. There are often patterns behind it, such as limited career growth, insufficient recognition, poor leadership, unclear expectations, or a mismatch between promise and reality.
Calculating employee turnover
You calculate the turnover rate over a fixed period, usually one year:
- Formula: (number of employees who left ÷ average number of employees) × 100
- Example: 12 employees leave with an average headcount of 100. The turnover rate is then 12 percent.
Also calculate turnover per team, role or length of service. An average for the whole organization often hides where things really go wrong.
When is employee turnover too high?
A commonly cited rule of thumb is that turnover of around 10 percent a year is healthy. What is normal does vary greatly by sector and role. So look mainly at:
- The trend: is turnover rising year over year?
- Who is leaving: are your high performers or key roles leaving?
- When people leave: a lot of departures in the first year often points to a problem in recruitment or onboarding
Why is staff turnover important?
Staff turnover directly affects an organization’s effectiveness. When employees leave, not only capacity disappears, but also knowledge, customer relationships, team rhythm, and informal experience.
Colleagues have to fill gaps, new people need to be trained, and managers spend time again on recruitment and onboarding. If this happens more often, a vicious cycle develops: departures increase pressure on those remaining, making their chance of leaving greater.
A turnover survey helps organizations retain employees better
To reduce staff turnover, you need to understand which factors bind employees to the organization and which factors create distance. That requires input from employees still in service, not just from people who have already left. This creates a fairer picture of retention, engagement, and turnover intention.
1. Earlier visibility of turnover intention
A turnover survey makes visible where employees hesitate about their future within the organization. Think of signals around perspective, recognition, workload, leadership, or alignment with culture. This allows you to have the conversation earlier and prevent departure from coming as a surprise.
2. Better understand why employees stay
Retention is not just about solving problems. It’s also about understanding what binds employees. By investigating where people draw energy, trust, and future perspective, you can strengthen what already works and use it more deliberately in teams where retention is fragile.
3. Less knowledge loss and recruitment pressure
High staff turnover often creates extra pressure on recruitment, onboarding, and existing teams. By detecting and more strategically reducing turnover earlier, you retain more knowledge in the organization. This gives teams breathing room and prevents recruitment from repeatedly filling the same gaps.
4. More targeted work on retention policy
Much retention policy remains generic: better working conditions, more focus on development, or a wellness offering. A turnover survey shows which topics actually correlate with turnover intention. This allows you to make choices that align with the causes in your organization.
5. Stronger conversations between employee and manager
When it becomes clear where employees disengage, managers can have more targeted conversations. Not just in an exit interview, but earlier: about expectations, growth, workload, autonomy, and collaboration. This makes retention more concrete and less dependent on gut feeling.
Conduct your turnover survey with Deepler’s software
With Deepler’s turnover module, you investigate which factors contribute to turnover intention and staff retention. Employees answer short, targeted questions on topics such as commitment, perspective, leadership, development opportunities, workload, and trust in the organization.
The results are displayed clearly in dashboards, so HR, management, and supervisors can see where risks emerge and which teams need extra attention. This way, staff turnover becomes not just a figure in a report, but a concrete improvement point you can act on.
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The most common causes of employee turnover
Employees rarely leave for a single reason. Small frustrations usually build up until an outside offer is just enough to make the move. These are the causes that come up most often:
- No growth prospects: employees see no next step in their development or career
- The relationship with their manager: too little support, feedback or recognition
- Workload: structurally too much work, leading to overload or burnout
- Terms of employment: salary or benefits that lag behind the market
- Atmosphere and culture: no connection with the team or the way of working
- A mismatch at the start: the role turns out to be different from what was promised during recruitment
- Little flexibility: no room to combine work and private life well
Which causes play a role in your organization differs per team. An exit interview tells you afterwards why one person left. A turnover survey shows you in advance where doubts arise.
From exit interview to preventive retention
An exit interview looks back: why is someone leaving? A turnover survey looks ahead: where does the risk arise that more employees will leave?
This shift is important. Organizations that only look at outflow react after the fact.
Organizations that measure turnover intention can act earlier. This makes retention policy more practical, because you not only know that turnover exists, but also which causes can be influenced.
What are the benefits of a turnover survey?
A turnover survey gives organizations language and data for a topic that often only becomes visible when it’s too late. Employees rarely leave for no reason.
Their choice is influenced by a combination of experiences, expectations, and future perspective. By measuring these factors systematically, you can reduce staff turnover while better understanding what employees need to stay.
Better manage staff turnover
Staff turnover brings more costs than just recruitment. Think of productivity loss, training time, loss of customer knowledge, extra pressure on colleagues, and project delays.
A turnover survey helps influence these costs earlier. Not by holding onto employees at all costs, but by understanding which circumstances cause valuable people to leave or want to stay.
Retain staff more effectively
Retaining staff requires more than an annual HR campaign. It requires concrete choices based on what employees actually experience.
For one team, turnover intention may be linked to leadership, for another to career growth, workload, or lack of autonomy. With Deepler, you see per team or segment where retention is under pressure and what actions make sense.
Stronger retention policy
Retention policy becomes stronger when it’s based on patterns rather than assumptions. Maybe managers think salary is the main reason, while employees mainly miss perspective, clarity, or recognition.
A turnover survey makes this discussable. This allows you to develop policy that aligns with employees’ reality and not just what the organization thinks is needed.
Reduce employee turnover: 9 practical tips
You cannot reduce employee turnover with a single measure. It takes attention at the moments when employees have doubts: at the start, in their development and in the relationship with their manager. These nine tips help you work on retention in a targeted way.
1. Measure where the intention to leave arises
Do not wait for the resignation letter. Ask employees regularly about commitment, prospects, leadership and workload. That way you see per team where the risk of departure is growing, and you can adjust course before people have gone.
2. Be honest during recruitment
A job ad that makes the role sound better than it is leads to disappointment and early departure. Describe honestly what the work involves, including the less enjoyable parts.
3. Invest in good onboarding
The first months determine whether someone stays. Provide a warm welcome, clear expectations and a dedicated buddy. Read more about measuring how new employees start on our page about onboarding research.
4. Hold stay interviews
An exit interview asks why someone is leaving. A stay interview asks why someone stays, and what could make them leave. Hold these conversations especially with employees you do not want to lose.
5. Make growth visible
Discuss ambitions and development wishes regularly. Make career paths and internal vacancies visible, so employees take their next step within the organization and not outside it.
6. Support managers
Managers have the greatest influence on retention. Give them insight into what their team experiences and help them give feedback, show appreciation and start the conversation in time.
7. Keep workload in balance
Departures often mean more work for those who stay, and that increases the chance of further departures. Keep an eye on workload per team and step in before that vicious circle starts.
8. Keep terms of employment and flexibility up to standard
Salary is rarely the only reason to leave, but falling behind the market does make switching easy. Compare your pay regularly and also look at flexible working and work-life balance.
9. Learn from everyone who leaves
Hold exit interviews and look for patterns: where do people leave, after how long and for what reasons? Combine those insights with data from employee surveys. You can read how to predict turnover with data in our article on people analytics and employee turnover.
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Experiences of clients who make a difference with us.
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Larren
Recruitment Lead,
De Selectie
“Recently, I used Deepler to arrive at an EVP. Great what they were able to achieve in a short time! In a period of two weeks, we collected information and were able to continue with our AMC plan. In any other situation, it takes weeks, if not months, to get this done. Contact is good, friendly and constructive. Very nice club to work with.”
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Douwe
Recruiter,
Securitas
“Ideal tool and company to gain more and better insight into the organization and employees as an organization! And especially with speed! For us, it was also the need to get tools for the topics of retention, to prevent future absenteeism or turnover. I also have experience with other parties and I sincerely value the speed of switching, follow-up and personal contact with Deepler. Absolutely recommended.”
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Jolanda
HR Business Partner,
Nedcargo
“Deepler is a great tool for continuously collecting feedback from our employees. This input is then centrally available for us as management, but also for managers who benefit from it.”
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Jonathan
Manager,
UWV
“What makes Deepler special is that it doesn’t get stuck in numbers. It helps you immediately understand where it is and what teams need. For us, this ensured that employees themselves came up with areas for improvement and took responsibility for them. The insights were sharp and useful, but most importantly: the conversation that started afterwards made the difference. Thanks to Deepler, we didn’t get a paper plan, but change that was supported by the people themselves.”
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Amadeus
COO,
OSRE
“The software has a positive impact on us as a rapidly growing organization. By better understanding what is going on in the workplace and what people offer as solutions for improvements, we can make more effective decisions. The platform helps us to gain real-time insight and to respond directly to it via the tool.”
Is a turnover survey mandatory?
A turnover survey is not legally mandatory in the Netherlands. Organizations are therefore not required to systematically measure why employees leave or why they stay.
Yet for many employers, it’s an important part of good HR policy. Staff turnover affects workload, continuity, costs, knowledge retention, and team quality.
By investigating turnover intention and commitment, you can see earlier where risks emerge. It’s not a legal checkbox, but a practical tool to better retain staff and reduce unwanted turnover.
Is a turnover survey anonymous?
A turnover survey works best when employees can answer safely and honestly. Anonymity is important, especially for questions about management, career prospects, work pressure, or doubts about staying.
Deepler reports results at group level, so individual answers cannot be traced back. This increases the likelihood that employees are open about what keeps them or pushes them away. Without trust, you mainly get socially desirable answers and miss the real causes of turnover.
What about GDPR and privacy in personnel turnover?
In a turnover survey, employee responses are processed. Therefore, it must be clear what data is collected, why it is collected, and how the results are used.
The focus should be on organizational improvement, not on evaluating individual employees. Results should preferably be displayed in aggregated form and only shared with those who need them for follow-up. When recording exit interviews or reasons for leaving, extra care is needed: do not record unnecessary personal details and communicate clearly in advance what will happen with the input.
What is the role of HR, managers, and management?
HR usually oversees the approach, questionnaire, communication, and follow-up of the turnover survey. Managers play a key role in discussing results within teams and translating insights into concrete actions.
Management is needed to address structural causes, such as career opportunities, work pressure, culture, or compensation policy. A works council or employee representative can contribute when the survey touches on broader personnel policy. The survey works especially well when it is clear in advance who has which responsibilities.
Why do many organizations still conduct a turnover survey?
Many organizations only realize that personnel turnover is a problem when vacancies pile up or teams come under pressure. A turnover survey helps to understand earlier where retention is vulnerable.
That is valuable in a tight labor market, where finding new people is often more difficult than retaining good employees. By systematically measuring turnover intention, engagement, and development needs, you can reduce personnel turnover before it becomes a recurring pattern.
How to get more out of your turnover survey
Measure before the exit interview
Exit interviews are valuable, but often too late. Also measure among employees still employed. That’s exactly where you discover which doubts, frustrations, or expectations are still influenceable.
Make retention concrete per team
Personnel turnover does not have the same cause everywhere. Look at which topics play out per team or segment. This prevents generic retention policies that do little about the real reasons for leaving.
Link insights to follow-up
Only ask for feedback if you are prepared to do something with the results. Share the key insights, choose clear priorities, and let employees see what actions follow.
Do’s of a turnover survey
A good turnover survey examines not just departure, but especially retention. You want to understand why employees stay, where doubts arise, and which factors are influenceable.
- Measure turnover intention before employees resign
- Combine feedback with existing turnover figures at group level
- Ask about engagement, prospects, leadership, and work pressure
- Discuss results with managers and teams
- Translate insights into concrete retention policy
Don’ts of a turnover survey
- Do not wait until the exit interview to ask for feedback
- Do not draw conclusions based on a single reason for leaving
- Do not make results traceable to individual employees
- Do not address turnover through compensation alone
- Do not ask for feedback without organizing follow-up
What do you do with the results of a turnover survey?
The value of a turnover survey emerges after the measurement. Results show where turnover intention arises, but retention requires choices, conversations, and follow-up. So do not start with a broad list of separate HR actions.
First look at which themes most strongly correlate with turnover risk. Is it a lack of career prospects? Insufficient recognition?
High work pressure? Leadership? A mismatch between expectation and reality? By translating these patterns into concrete actions, the survey becomes a practical basis for staff retention.
From insight to action
With the patterns in turnover and engagement in view, the time has come to implement targeted measures. This doesn’t mean you tackle everything at once: it’s much more effective to focus on the themes that are most strongly related to turnover risk in your organization. These can be improvements in perspective, appreciation, workload, leadership or aligning expectations.
A structured approach ensures that your investment in the turnover survey translates into actual results and better employee retention. By carrying out the right follow-up steps in the right order, you build a sustainable program that delivers both immediate and long-term effects. We have identified six concrete follow-up steps that help put this into practice:
Want to know what keeps employees committed to your organization? Read our article:
Optimizing the employee experience to increase retention
Analyze patterns in turnover and engagement
Combine survey results with existing HR data, such as outflow, length of service, teams, and job groups. Look for patterns at group level and avoid overinterpreting individual situations.
Determine where retention is most vulnerable
Not every team faces the same risk. Some teams lose mainly new employees, others especially experienced staff. Focus on areas where turnover intention, low engagement, and organizational impact converge.
Share the key insights
Make clear what employees have provided and which themes are prioritized. Transparency builds trust and prevents the survey from feeling like an HR exercise without follow-up.
Have the conversation about staying
Use results as a starting point for conversations about perspective, appreciation, workload, autonomy and development. Ask employees not only what needs to improve, but also what actually binds them to the organization.
Create a targeted retention plan
Choose actions that match the cause. Think of better onboarding, career paths, leadership development, workload management, internal mobility or clearer expectations about role and growth.
Keep measuring and adjust
Employee retention is not a one-time project. By measuring regularly, you see if actions are working and where new turnover risks are emerging. This keeps retention policy current.
Have the right conversation about employee retention
With Deepler, signals around engagement, turnover intention, leadership and development needs are translated into clear dashboards and team insights. This allows HR and managers to have conversations based on patterns rather than assumptions. This helps reduce staff turnover and offer employees perspective sooner.
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Frequently asked questions
What is employee turnover?
Employee turnover means that employees leave an organization and need to be replaced. Some turnover is normal.
It becomes a real problem when valuable employees leave, teams lose knowledge or the pressure on recruitment and colleagues increases. Then it’s important to not only know the turnover rate, but also understand the reasons behind departures.
How can you reduce employee turnover?
Reducing employee turnover begins with understanding why employees hesitate or leave. Investigate themes such as engagement, leadership, development opportunities, workload, recognition and future prospects.
Then translate the outcomes into targeted actions per team or target group. This way you avoid generic retention policies and work on causes that really impact retention.
What is the difference between turnover and retention?
Turnover is about employees leaving the organization. Retention is about keeping employees.
The two are closely linked, but require a different perspective. If you only look at turnover, you react after the fact. If you examine retention, you look ahead: what makes employees want to stay?
What is an exit interview?
An exit interview is a conversation with an employee who is leaving the organization. The goal is to understand why someone is leaving and what the organization can learn from it.
Exit interviews are valuable, but often come too late. Therefore, combine them with research among employees who are still employed.
What are common causes of employee turnover?
Common causes are lack of development opportunities, insufficient recognition, high workload, poor leadership, limited autonomy, unclear expectations or a mismatch with culture. Salary can also play a role, but is far from the only reason. That’s why research is important: assumptions don’t always hold true.
What is retention policy?
Retention policy is the set of choices and actions an organization uses to try to keep employees. Think of good onboarding, development paths, leadership, workload management, recognition, internal mobility and clear communication. Strong retention policy is based on data and conversations, not just general terms of employment.
How do you calculate employee turnover?
Employee turnover is often calculated by dividing the number of employees who left in a period by the average number of employees in that same period. The result is usually expressed as a percentage.
This figure tells you how many people leave, but not why. Therefore, additional research into causes and turnover intent is needed.
When is employee turnover too high?
Whether employee turnover is too high depends on sector, job group, organizational growth and type of departure. Turnover is particularly concerning when good employees you want to keep leave, teams become structurally understaffed, or new employees quickly drop out. Therefore, don’t just look at the percentage, but also at impact and pattern.
What happens after a turnover survey?
After a turnover survey, you analyze where turnover intent and low engagement emerge. Then you share the key insights, discuss results with managers and teams, and choose targeted actions. Think of better onboarding, career development, workload reduction, leadership development or clearer expectations.
What does a turnover survey cost?
The cost of a turnover survey varies by provider, organization size and desired depth. Important factors are the number of employees, analysis, dashboards, reporting and any coaching.
With Deepler you work with packages that allow you to use employee research structurally. Check the prices for current options.
What questions do you ask in a turnover survey?
Good questions address factors that influence whether employees want to stay. Examples include: I see sufficient future prospects within this organization; I feel valued for my contribution; My manager supports my development; My workload is manageable; I would recommend this organization as an employer.
How often should you survey turnover?
It depends on the situation. With high or increasing staff turnover, it is wise to measure more frequently and briefly.
In stable organizations, turnover research can be part of a broader cycle around employee experience, engagement and retention. It is important that you follow up on results before measuring again.
How do you ensure that employees answer honestly about their intention to leave?
Honest answers arise when employees trust the process. Make it clear that the survey is intended to improve the organization, not to evaluate individual employees. Guarantee anonymity, report at group level and show what actions follow from the feedback.
What is a stay interview?
A stay interview is a conversation with an employee who still works for you, about why they stay and what could be a reason to leave. It is the opposite of an exit interview: you pick up signals before someone leaves.
What is the difference between desirable and undesirable turnover?
Desirable turnover is departure that suits the organization, for example when someone is not performing well or a role disappears. Undesirable turnover is the departure of employees you would have liked to keep. It is mainly the latter you want to reduce.
What does employee turnover cost?
Employee turnover costs more than recruitment alone. Think of the time spent on selection and induction, lost productivity until a new colleague is up to speed, extra workload for the team and the loss of knowledge and client relationships.
How does onboarding help reduce employee turnover?
Many departures happen in the first year, often due to a mismatch between expectations and reality or too little guidance. Good onboarding with clear expectations, a buddy and regular check-ins reduces that risk.
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