It depends on the calculation. But imagine if you need 10 people to staff the kitchen, and you constantly have some folks quitting, so you hire to replace them, then someone stops showing up and gets fired, then you hire someone to replace them, and so forth–you might well end up having to hire 15 total people over the course of the year just to staff the 10 people you need running the kitchen every day.
That could be calculated as a 150% turnover rate (15 is 150% of 10). You always (try to) have 10 people, but because turnover (people leaving and needing to be replaced) is so high, you end up needing to hire more than that over the course of a year just to keep it staffed full time.
Turnover is how many employees you replace in a year.
Say you start the year with 100 employees, and by the end of the year you replace 50 of them, that’s 50% turnover. If you replace all 100 of them, that’s 100% turnover.
But what happens if all your employees only work for a couple months. If your first set of 100 employees all get replaced in the first 6 months, you’ve already hit 100% turnover. Then if from that second set you have to replace 50 more because 50 of the second group quit/got fired in the last 6 months of the year, that’s another 50 people hired to fill the same 100 positions. That’s 150 people hired in a year to fill 100 positions.
TL/DR: you can hire more people in a year than you have positions to fill if all your employees only stay around for a couple months. Some companies can hit 300% turnover where each employee on average only stays for 2 or 3 months.
You have 10 employees
In the first 4 month period, 5 employees quit or get fired, and all get replaced with new employees. You now have 50% turnover and 10 employees.
In the second 4 month period, 5 more employees quit or get fired, and all get replaced with new employees. You now have 100% turnover and 10 employees.
In the third 4 month period, another 5 employees quit or get fired, and all get replaced with new employees. You now have 150% turnover and 10 employees.
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