How to Measure Contact Centre Turnover

Justin Robbins of Talkdesk explains how to calculate advisor turnover in the contact centre.

Contact centre turnover is inevitable. The role of a call centre agent is often a low-paying, entry-level position. Many people accept these positions to get their foot in the door with a company, or as a means of earning income until something better comes along.

The drivers of turnover can vary significantly depending on the organisation, job market, industry, location or a variety of other social or economic factors. It’s important to understand each of the factors that contributes to turnover and how it can be avoided.

One of the ways that contact centre leaders can understand their attrition rates is to measure the four types of employee turnover. They are:

Internal Voluntary: This is when an employee pursues a position within your organisation. Internal turnover is often viewed as positive (in the case of promotions, or cross-training strategies) but could be negative if employees are looking to escape poor management or stressful working conditions.

Internal Involuntary: This is when an employer makes the decision to shift an employee’s role and responsibilities. Examples of this type of turnover could include a leadership promotion, a reassignment based on changing business needs or a performance-based demotion.

External Voluntary: This type of turnover is when an employee voluntarily chooses to resign from the organisation. Voluntary turnover could be the result of a more appealing job offer, staff conflict, or lack of advancement opportunities.

External Involuntary: This type of turnover is when an employer chooses to release an employee from the organisation. Involuntary turnover could be a result of poor performance, staff conflict, the at-will employment clause, etc.

Each type of turnover should be tracked monthly and annually—using both actual and average measurements. These calculations enable contact centre leaders to understand how their turnover may change from month to month, as well as to understand overall trends on a monthly or annual basis.

Here are some examples of using the various types of turnover calculation:

Scenario: My contact centre typically has filled 50 positions. Over the course of one month, we employed 63 different people. At the end of the month, 46 positions were filled and 4 were vacant. In total, 17 people quit or were terminated during the month.

Monthly Actual (Calculated each month):

17 (total # of people lost during the month) / 63 (total # of employees during the month) 17/63 = .269

.269 X 100 = 26.9% actual attrition rate for the month

These next few calculations use example numbers to demonstrate how turnover can be measured as a monthly average, annual actual, and annual average.

Monthly Average (Calculated over the course of several months):

12 (average # of people lost per month) / 56 (average # of employees per month) 12/56 = .214

.214 X 100 = 21.4% average monthly attrition over the past M # of months

Annual Actual (Calculated each year):

86 (total # of people lost during the year) / 718 (total # of employees for the year) 86/718 = .119

.119 X 100 = 11.9% actual attrition rate for the year

Annual Average (Calculated over the course of several years):

Justin Robbins

75 (average # of people lost per year) / 724 (average # of employees per year) 75/724 =.103

.103 X 100 = 10.3% average attrition rate over the past Y # of years

Contact centre turnover is not altogether avoidable but, with the right tracking systems in place, you can gain a better understanding of how it’s affecting your organisation and develop strategies for addressing it.

Author: Robyn Coppell

Published On: 28th Feb 2019
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