Chapter 04 · People & supply chainsHuman Rights & Social Sustainability
Attrition rate
Definition
The proportion of employees who leave an organisation over a period (usually a year) whose positions are not replaced, expressed as unreplaced departures divided by average headcount × 100. Attrition covers natural departures — retirements, resignations, relocations, eliminated positions — and results in a smaller workforce, unlike turnover, which counts all separations including refilled roles.
References
Supports definition and framing.
Overview
What it means
The distinction matters analytically: turnover measures churn (movement through roles), attrition measures shrinkage. Organisations sometimes manage costs through "strategic attrition" — not backfilling departures — as an alternative to layoffs. Healthy-attrition benchmarks of around 10% or less are commonly cited, though interpretation depends on industry and context.
How it is used
HR teams track attrition alongside voluntary and involuntary turnover for workforce planning; in sustainability and social reporting, workforce stability metrics (including departures) feature in disclosures on employment practices and in human-capital assessments.
Why it matters
Workforce stability is a social-sustainability signal: high attrition can indicate poor working conditions, low engagement or restructuring pressure, while unmanaged attrition erodes institutional knowledge. Precise metrics keep social reporting honest about what the numbers mean.
Definitions and controversy
Usage is inconsistent — some sources use "attrition" and "turnover" interchangeably; the entry follows the stricter HR distinction (unreplaced departures only).