For decades, HR organizations and executives throughout the company have fretted over turnover metrics. “Our turnover is increasing … what are we going to do?” was a refrain heard constantly.

But, just once, another question needs to be asked …

“So? What if they sucked?”

There are probably more tactful ways to get to the same issue but it’s a legitimate question. The fact is turnover is only a bad thing if you loose a good performer. It can be a great thing if finally that deadbeat of an employee takes a walk.

We need to be looking for a new metric that can focus on “good turnover” and “bad turnover”. Of course “good turnover” would mean that you made a bad hire in the first place but shouldn’t that go into a successful hiring metric?

Here is my proposal (right off the top of my head) to begin a new set of metrics with the resulting outcome …

1.)  Good Turnover: Crappy employee quits or gets fired. Commence party, flog the recruiter.

2.)  Bad Turnover: Good employee quits or gets fired. No party, flog the manager.

I’m sure that you can come up with far better ideas but I would challenge you to really rethink the entire turnover metric as it’s dated and tells us nothing about the state or health of our operation.