Insights

Is 1.5× Salary the Right Number? Probably Not for the People You're Losing
Three credible sources price employee turnover at 21%, 150% and 200% of salary. They do not conflict. Here is what each one counts, and which is yours. Read more...
What Your Exit Interview Data is Really Telling You
Your exit interview data says compensation. MIT's research says culture predicts leaving 10.4x better. Here is how to read a file of safe answers. Read more...
Two Years of HRIS Data Will Tell You What Exit Interviews Never Did
Two records exist for the same departure. The first is an exit interview. A senior engineer, with four years on the job, talks to HR. She says she’s found a role with more scope. She's warm about it. She thanks the company. The form is filed as voluntary and non-regretted. The reason listed is career growth. The second record is in your HRIS. It shows she was the fourth person to leave that manager's team in fourteen months, out of eleven. It shows the previous three all had above-median tenure.... Read more...
Your Attrition Spread is an Item Nobody Has Priced
Here's the arithmetic and how to run it on your own HRIS data. Somebody good left last quarter. The file codes it as voluntary.  That is the last time anyone looked at it. It reached a total turnover of twelve percent. This figure went onto a slide for the board. They noted that twelve percent matches the industry benchmark. Nobody in the room was wrong. The rate is normal. The benchmark is real. The most costly issue in your organization went unnoticed in that meeting. An aggregate averages costs, and... Read more...
Can Autism Develop Later in Life?
No. Autism doesn't develop later in life. It's a difference in how the brain develops early, and it's there from the beginning. What develops later is the situation. At some point, the demands on you become too much to handle quietly. Then, what was once invisible becomes clear. I was fifty-five when that happened to me. Not because anything new started, but because the bill finally came due. The Threshold, Not the Onset The diagnostic manual is unusually direct about this. It says that autistic traits might not show up... Read more...
What Psychological Safety Is Not
By Peter Mann Psychological safety shifted from a research finding to a slide sometime between 1999 and now. The original work was specific. Amy Edmondson defined it as the belief that team members can take interpersonal risks without facing punishment. She also created a seven-item tool to measure this concept. Google's Project Aristotle studied 180 teams to see what made the best ones succeed. They expected to find smart people or the perfect mix of skills. Instead, they discovered that psychological safety was the key factor. Both of those are... Read more...