What a turnover rate will not tell you
A single percentage can hide a supervisor change, a closed night shift, or a cohort that was always going to leave after harvest.
HR packs still arrive with one turnover percentage highlighted in bold, as if the year had a single mood. The percentage is not false. It is incomplete in ways that change the meeting.
A clinic we read had a “steady” annual rate. Split by month, almost half the leavers sat in the eight weeks after a supervisor change on nights. Split by contract, the harvest cashiers in a retail file left in February because they had always been hired through December. Neither story is visible if you only keep the annual rate.
Before you chart the rate, ask three quieter questions. Were internal moves counted as leavers? Did a closed shift shrink the denominator? Did a cohort have an end date written into the contract? The Staffing Pattern Study and the Turnover Review exist because those answers live in different files.
If you only have time for one extra table this quarter, print leavers by month and by supervisor area. It is less elegant than a single number and much harder to argue with.