Walmart is working on a way of measuring optimal staff turnover that balances high retention with workforce productivity.

Speaking at the recent People Analytics 2016 conference in London, Saba Beyene, the global retail giant’s senior director for people analytics, told delegates Walmart had been on a drive to reduce staff turnover since 2010. 

Beyene told Recruiter that while she could not reveal the level of staff turnover in 2010, it was above the retail benchmark of between 40% and 50%.

She told delegates the firm measures staff turnover by feeding in cost of hire, cost of training and cost of onboarding, as well the impact to sales departments of other colleagues having to pick up the slack from departing workers.

Beyene explained by working out the overall cost of staff turnover she was able to feedback to the business that if staff turnover was cut by just 1%, this would result in millions of dollars in savings for the company.

Beyene added she is now working on something called the “workforce equation” or an optimal level of staff turnover.

“When you have high retention, you have to be able to improve the productivity. We are having that discussion right now.

“You can just retain everybody but is that cost effective? As you retain everybody, you have to improve productivity.”

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