Technician Turnover Cost: Count Recruiting and Capacity

Separate Recruiting From the Training Budget

The model allows $5,000 per hire for recruiting and related costs, including some onboarding time. The annual calculation is 12.50 FTE times 20% turnover times $5,000, or $12,500. That is the recruiting allowance for this example, not the complete cost of every departure.

Training and certifications have a separate $2,500 allowance per FTE each year. That budget exists for staff who remain as well as people who join. Don't charge the whole annual allowance to turnover and then count it again as ordinary staff development.

Use actual invoices and recorded time when estimating a particular replacement. Keep them beside the allowances so you can see what is already included. The job advert won't answer the phone.

Calculate the Capacity That Needs Cover

The example desk has 3.20 FTE of ticket and alert work, staffed by four people. At about 96.83 productive hours per person each month, staffed capacity is about 387.3 hours against about 309.8 hours of work. Using unrounded model inputs, the remaining capacity is about 77.6 hours, or 0.80 FTE.

If one technician leaves and the workload stays unchanged, three people remain responsible for 3.20 FTE of work. The remaining monthly capacity is below that workload. Identify which work can move and who will cover it before assuming the existing slack absorbs a whole vacancy.

My test is: what does this do to the board on Monday morning? Put a named person against the departing technician's work, and check what that person must stop doing. A name on the cover plan isn't additional capacity.

Measure Vacancy and Ramp Separately

Use the last working day and the replacement's actual start date to measure the vacancy. Estimate the productive work needing cover during that gap from the departing role's workload. Keep the forecast visible until you can replace it with the actual dates.

After the new person starts, record the work they can complete and the help they need. Compare equivalent work rather than assuming every closed ticket requires the same effort. The gap between the role's required capacity and the new person's contribution is the ramp shortfall to estimate.

Log mentoring time separately. If the experienced technician's lost delivery capacity is already in your shortfall estimate, don't add the same hours again as training. Use a consistent method so another service lead can repeat the calculation.

I'd skip any growth hack that supplies a ramp duration without inspecting the work. Use your own hiring history and the skills required for the role. A fixed recovery period would conceal the assumption you most need to test.

Value the Hours Without Inventing a Cash Loss

The model's US Tier 1 salary is $50,000. Applying its burden multiplier gives $50,000 × 1.25 = $62,500 annually. Burden includes the model's employer taxes, benefits, and insurance above salary.

The model uses 1,660 available hours a year at 70% service utilization. That gives 1,660 × 70% = 1,162 productive hours annually, or 1,162 / 12 = about 96.83 monthly. For this role, $62,500 / 1,162 = about $53.79 per productive hour.

Multiply the uncovered hours by the appropriate role's productive-hour allocation to value the capacity involved. Then record the actual additional spending separately. Overtime, temporary cover, and recruiting invoices are different from the value of work the remaining team could not perform.

A vacant role can also leave salary unpaid during the gap. Include that change in the cash comparison rather than assuming the business pays a full salary and loses the same hours as an additional cash expense. For fixed-fee support, don't call every unworked hour lost billable revenue.

Check the Load on the People Who Stay

Ask the service lead to inspect overtime and reassigned work while the vacancy remains open. Record which commitments have moved and who now owns them. My view is that cover deserves a separate review alongside recruiting progress, because the remaining team's workload is part of the decision.

Review the on-call roster as well. The model's example has about 1.01 live call-outs a week, below its planning line of more than 2.00, and pays a $300 weekly stipend to the on-call engineer. A smaller rotation can make each remaining technician take the duty more frequently without changing the total call volume.

Use the actual roster and call records when deciding whether the arrangement still fits. Check the skills available during each duty period. A weekly average doesn't establish that every shift has qualified cover.

Compare a Specific Retention Option

Price the change you are considering rather than treating retention as one generic program. A pay change, protected training time, and an on-call change have different costs and responsibilities. Ask what problem each proposal addresses before assigning it a value.

The model favors healthy margins that fund good pay and a standard client technology stack. Use those positions to examine your own plan. Don't promise that spending the training budget or granting a raise will prevent a resignation.

Compare only additional costs on a consistent time basis. If the training money was already budgeted, show that baseline before adding a proposed change. Record the cash commitments and the delivery hours required to put the change into practice.

Give the Estimate an Owner

• Owner: choose the role and the retention option being compared, with the decision period stated.
• Hiring lead: record recruiting commitments and expected dates, then replace estimates with actual results.
• Service lead: estimate uncovered delivery hours, ramp contribution, and mentoring time without overlap.
• Finance owner: reconcile the $5,000 allowance with itemized costs and remove any duplicate onboarding time.
• Service lead: check roster coverage and record the effect on the people who remain.
• Owner: compare the proposed spending with the replacement scenario and record which assumptions could change the decision.

Start with your last departure and reconstruct its dates and work records. Put the recruiting total beside the capacity estimate and additional cash costs, keeping each category separate. Compare that result with a specific retention proposal before setting the next commitment.