🇳🇿 Built for New Zealand Organisations

Your best people are leaving.
Do you know what that’s costing you?

Most New Zealand organisations are haemorrhaging talent — and the financial damage is far larger than the recruitment bill. This free calculator shows you the real number, and what career pathways can do about it.

21.4%NZ average total turnover
100–300%Of salary to replace one employee
#1Career growth: top reason people leave
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The Problem

Turnover isn’t a people problem.
It’s a business model problem.

New Zealand organisations are treating staff departure as an inevitable cost of doing business. It isn’t. Behind every exit is an avoidable organisational failure — and a growing financial liability most leaders have never properly measured.

17.4%
Voluntary turnover rate
Voluntary turnover rate across NZ in 2023, according to the Lawson Williams Staff Turnover Survey. That’s nearly 1 in 5 of your people — gone by choice.
9 mo.
Time to full productivity
Average time for a new hire to reach full productivity. For nine months, you are paying full salary for part-capacity output — while the team absorbs the gap.
$23,860
Average cost to hire
Average NZD cost to hire a single employee, before onboarding, training, and the hidden cost of team disruption are accounted for. (AHRI 2023)

The number on your balance sheet is the tip of the iceberg.

Recruitment costs are visible. The invoice lands, it gets approved, and it gets filed. But the real cost of losing a valued team member runs far deeper — and most organisations never measure it.

“When a specialist walks out the door, they take with them an average of 9 months of embedded knowledge, client relationships, and earned trust.”

Vacancy productivity loss, ramp-up drag, team morale impact, and customer disruption can multiply your direct costs by 1.2 to 1.5 times. For a professional earning $85,000, the true cost of losing them can exceed $120,000 — before you’ve even posted the job ad.

True cost of one leaver
Based on a professional earning $85,000/year
Recruitment & hiring$23,860
Vacancy productivity loss$9,308
Onboarding & training$12,750
Ramp-up productivity loss$26,775
Hidden & team impact (+20%)$14,539
Total cost per leaver$87,232
Calculated using NZ benchmarks. Enter your actual figures above for a precise estimate.
The Calculator

Your organisation.
Your real number.

Built on New Zealand benchmark data. Adjust the inputs to match your workforce — and see what reducing turnover by even five percentage points is worth.

Workforce Scope
Define the employee group you want to analyse. You can model the entire organisation or a specific segment.
Select a segment to apply NZ benchmark defaults for that role level.
Can be total workforce or a specific team/segment.
$
NZ median ~$61,400 (Stats NZ 2023).[1]
Turnover Rates
Set your current and target turnover rates. NZ voluntary turnover averaged 17.4% in 2023 (Lawson Williams).[2]
NZ PRESETS:
%
0%30%60%
%
0%30%60%
Cost per Leaver (% of Salary)
Based on NZ/ANZ benchmarks that estimate replacement costs at 50–300% of salary depending on role complexity.[6]
ROLE PRESETS:
125%
25%150%300%
Career Development Investment (optional)
Enter the annual cost of your career pathways / internal mobility programme to calculate ROI.[7]
$
Leave $0 to skip ROI calculation.
Annual Cost — Current
$0
0 leavers/yr
Annual Cost — Target
$0
0 leavers/yr
Potential Annual Saving
$0
0 fewer leavers
Cost per Leaver
$0
— of salary
Turnover Reduction
0 pp
percentage point drop
Current Annual Cost
$0
at 0% turnover
After Career Investment
$0
at 0% target turnover
Annual Cost Visualisation
Current annual turnover cost$0
Target annual turnover cost$0
Potential saving$0
In New Zealand, national staff turnover averaged 21.4% total / 17.4% voluntary in 2023 (Lawson Williams NZ Staff Turnover Survey). Local benchmarks suggest replacing an employee can cost 50–300% of salary depending on role. This calculator uses conservative mid-points based on those benchmarks. All figures are in NZD.
References & Benchmark Sources
1
Stats NZ — Income and work: June 2023 quarter. Wellington: Statistics New Zealand, 2023. Supports default median annual salary reference (~$61,400 NZD).
2
Lawson Williams Consulting Group — NZ Staff Turnover Survey 2023. Auckland: Lawson Williams, 2023. Provides NZ national voluntary turnover rate of 17.4% and total turnover of 21.4%.
3
SEEK — SEEK Employment Report / NZ Recruitment Benchmarks. Melbourne: SEEK Ltd, 2023. Supports default time-to-fill of ~40 days for NZ roles.
4
SHRM — The Cost of Poor Hiring Decisions and High Turnover (ANZ contextualised). 2022. Provides ramp-up period of 6–12 months and 60–70% productivity during ramp-up.
5
AHRI (Australian HR Institute) — State of the Workforce Report 2023 (ANZ proxy for NZ). Reports average cost to hire of ~AUD$23,860 (~NZD$26,000 equivalent).
6
Deloitte / Mercer ANZ — Total Cost of Workforce Turnover (ANZ). 2020–2023. NZ/ANZ sources estimate total replacement cost at 100–300% of salary.
7
Gallup — State of the Global Workplace 2023 / LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report 2023. Career development consistently ranked among top 3 reasons for voluntary resignation.

Ready to close the gap between your current and target turnover?

Interactive career pathways give your people a clear picture of where they can go — and a compelling reason to stay. Let’s talk about what that looks like for your organisation →

Career pathways aren’t a nice-to-have. They’re the fix.

Research consistently shows career development is one of the top three drivers of voluntary resignation. When people can see a future — a real, mapped, achievable future — inside your organisation, they stop looking outside it.

🗺️

Visible progression

Interactive pathway maps show every team member exactly what the next role looks like, what skills it requires, and what closing the gap actually involves. No guesswork. No ambiguity.

Internal mobility

When your best people are ready for more, they find it inside your organisation — not by handing in their notice. Internal movement costs a fraction of external replacement.

📈

Measurable ROI

Even a five percentage point reduction in voluntary turnover can return hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. The calculator above shows you exactly what your number looks like.

“The organisations that retain talent at scale are the ones that make the future feel concrete — not abstract. Career pathways do that.”
— Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2023. Employees who feel there are opportunities to grow are 2.9× more likely to stay.
2.9×More likely to stay when career growth is clear

What working with us looks like

01

Quantify the problem

Use the calculator to arrive at a defensible, NZ-benchmarked cost of your current turnover. This becomes the business case for every conversation that follows.

02

Map your roles and pathways

We design interactive career pathway tools tailored to your organisation — role by role, department by department, with clear competency frameworks and progression criteria.

03

Deploy and embed

Your pathways go live as beautiful, navigable digital tools your managers can use in 1:1s and your employees can explore independently — not a PDF that collects dust on the intranet.

04

Measure the return

Track voluntary turnover over 12 months and return to your calculator. The ROI of reduced turnover speaks for itself — and typically dwarfs the investment in the programme.

Built for organisations that are serious about keeping their people.

This calculator — and the career pathway work behind it — is designed for:

🏥 Healthcare & Aged Care
🏗️ Construction & Engineering
🐾 Not-for-profit & Social Services
🏨 Hospitality & Retail
🏢 Professional Services
🏛️ Local Government

You now know the cost.
Let’s reduce it.

Book a no-obligation conversation to explore what interactive career pathways could look like in your organisation — and what the return on that investment could be.

No commitment. No sales pitch. Just a clear-eyed conversation about your numbers and your options.