How to use the employee replacement cost calculator
When someone leaves, it is easy to count only the job ad and the agency fee. In practice a large share of the loss sits in the weeks the seat is empty and in the months a new hire needs before running at full speed. This calculator takes six separate items, adds them into a replacement cost per employee, and shows what share each item contributes.
Vacancy productivity loss is the vacancy period multiplied by the monthly value of the role. Ramp-up productivity loss is the ramp-up period multiplied by the monthly value, counting only the gap between 100% and the average productivity you enter for that period. Set ramp-up productivity to 100% and that item becomes zero.
Cost levels differ enormously by role and industry, so no benchmark multiple is baked in. Every figure is an input you control. The result also expresses the total as a number of months of the role value, which is a practical ceiling for what a retention program is worth spending. Add separations per year to see the annual total.
Frequently asked questions
Monthly salary understates it. The closer figure is the gross profit or value the person generated in a month. When that is hard to isolate, some teams use roughly 1.5 to 2 times monthly pay as a working stand-in.
The annual total row is hidden and only the per-employee figure is shown. Enter a number and the annual total is the per-employee cost displayed on screen multiplied by that number.