Turnover

18 The average turnover⁹ rate across all Public Service departments was 15.2% (17.2% for women, 12.7% for men) for the year to 30 June 2000. This is slightly up on last years' figure of 13.3%. The turnover figures exclude separations where fixed term contracts have come to an end. It is unclear how much of this turnover represents a capability loss to the Public Service, because departments do not hold reliable data on movement between Public Service departments.

19 Public Service turnover rates for the last five years are presented in Table 4 below. Turnover rates by department varied from 7.6% to 26.6%¹⁰. Eight departments had a turnover rate of more than 20%¹¹.

Table 4: Public Service Turnover Rates (%) for years ending June 1996 to June 2000

20 Resignations are the largest component of unplanned turnover¹². Occupations¹³ with the highest resignation rates were Technical Representatives (25.1%, almost all of whom are call-centre staff), Systems Managers (23.2%) and Library Assistants (22.3%). Most of the occupation groups with significantly above average turnover rates are in the corporate and support areas. While many of these occupation groups are found in large numbers outside the Public Service, many are found in small numbers within each department. Therefore departments can be vulnerable to high turnover of specialist positions, at least in the short-term.

21 Some front line staff, policy analysts and economists have slightly higher than average resignation rates. Table 5 below shows occupation groups that have high levels of resignations.

Table 5: Occupations with high numbers of resignations

⁹ Turnover measures the rates at which staff are leaving the organisation. It is defined as the total number of staff leaving during a specified period, divided by the average number of staff employed at the start, and at the end, of that period, and is expressed as a percentage.

¹⁰ One small department had a turnover rate above this range (43%), but because of its size a small number of cessations had a large effect.

¹¹ Turnover rates in departments that are based on less than ten staff have been excluded from this calculation. This is because figures based on such small numbers are potentially misleading or unstable.

¹² The rate of other types of unplanned turnover (dismissals and deaths) was 0.3% for the last year. Planned turnover includes retirements (although these are increasingly difficult to define), restructuring and staff finishing fixed term contracts. Cessations due to the end of fixed term contracts are not included in the overall turnover figures.

¹³ The descriptions used in this section are the terms used by Statistics NZ in their most detailed classification of occupations.