Why are people leaving?
2024 full year (Jan–Dec 2024) · Regular employees · Prepared 12 Jul 2026 · For: CHRO
Attrition in 2024 ran 15.5% annualized (voluntary 8.8%) against an average headcount of 3,131 — a healthy number for a company this size. If a dashboard has shown you 29.9%, that figure divides all-time terminations by everyone ever employed; it is not an annual rate and overstates the picture roughly 2×. The real issue isn't how many leave — it's when: 57% of leavers were gone inside their first year. No single team drives it. This is a front-door problem — hiring fit and early-tenure pay — not a failing department.
Measured honestly, attrition is 15.5% — not the 29.9% on the dashboard
The same terminations produce wildly different "rates" depending on the denominator. Dividing three years of terminations by everyone ever employed yields 29.9% — a cumulative ratio, not an annual rate. Annualized against average headcount for a single year, the honest figure is 15.5% (8.8% voluntary). Same people, same exits; the method is the whole story.
People leave early: 57% are gone inside their first year
No department clears the bar for an elevated segment — team rates sit within a normal spread (highest is Product at 13.8% voluntary). The signal is tenure, not team. Exits cluster hard at the start: 165 leavers left inside six months and another 110 by the one-year mark — together 57% of all 2024 departures — then the curve falls away sharply.
Two front-door problems: early-hire pay and hiring fit
The two sides of the first-year cliff point the same way. On the voluntary side, compensation is the #1 exit reason (82 of 274), ahead of "better opportunity." On the involuntary side (6.8%, steady across the year — not a one-time cut), the top reasons are skills mismatch and PIP failure — a hiring-fit signal, not a layoff. New hires are both quitting for pay and being managed out for fit, inside their first year.
Definitions
- Attrition rate
- Leavers in window ÷ average headcount × (12 ÷ window months). Average headcount = mean of the 12 month-end active counts.
- Voluntary / involuntary
- Split by termination type. Internal transfers are excluded from leavers (none present in this data).
- Source
- Peoplenometry metrics library v1.0. No house overrides applied.
- Population
- Regular employees. Window: 1 Jan – 31 Dec 2024.
The numbers
- Average headcount: 3,131 (month-end range 2,782 in January → 3,477 in December).
- Leavers in window: 486 → 15.5% annualized. Voluntary 274 → 8.8%. Involuntary 212 → 6.8%.
- Reconciliation to 29.9%: the dashboard divides 1,485 all-time terminations by 4,962 ever-employed — a cumulative three-year ratio, not an annual rate.
- Tenure at exit: <6mo 165 · 6–12mo 110 · 1–2yr 105 · 2–3yr 80 · 3yr+ 26.
- Top voluntary reasons: compensation 82 · better opportunity 64 · work-life balance 38.
Per-segment (voluntary, annualized)
| Department | Rate | Leavers (n) | Avg HC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product | 13.8% | 34 | 247 |
| People & Culture | 12.3% | 19 | 154 |
| Customer Success | 9.1% | 22 | 240 |
| Engineering | 8.7% | 98 | 1,121 |
| Sales | 6.8% | 26 | 383 |
| Operations | 3.9% | 3 | 78 |
No department reaches 1.5× the 8.8% company voluntary rate at the required sample size — so none is headlined as an elevated segment.
Caveats
- Exit reasons are self-reported codes — association, not proven cause.
- Single 12-month window; no prior-year baseline, so trend direction is unknown.
- Compensation is a lead to test, not a confirmed driver, until a compa-ratio analysis runs.
To strengthen this analysis
- Add compa-ratio / band position at hire and exit to test the pay hypothesis.
- Measure new-hire 90-day survival by source and recruiter.
- Add a prior-year window to establish whether early-tenure loss is rising or chronic.