Throughout my business life I have always been surprised thatstatistics which look so authoritative when set out in neat tables donot always mean what they appear to say. For example, in the late1970s when I was examining the extent to which the UK economywas becoming owned by the public sector, I found that thepublished ®gures underestimated government involvement inmanufacturing and service industries. The reason was that theStatistical Of®ce did not count as public sector any business whichwas a limited company, which meant that British Leyland, Cableand Wireless, Thomas Cook, and many other large and well-knownorganizations which were owned by the government were stillclassed as private sector. The issue was open, in the sense that itcould be discovered by anyone studying all the publishedde®nitions, but how many of us do this when on the surfaceeverything appears to be clear?

I was reminded of this when looking at some new statistics (IPD,1996). These look at labour turnover in 1995 in the UK, by broadoccupational group, industry, and part-time and full-time employ-ees. National ®gures show that the lowest turnover rates occurredwith management/administrative employees (11.5%), and thehighest with routine unskilled employees (23.91%). By industry,retailing showed the highest rate for all employees (43%), but thereport cautions about the low response rate from this industry. Thelowest rate where there was a large sample was local government,with a turnover of 12%. Other ®gures show that rates of turnoverare higher for part-time than for full-time employees.

Such ®gures are interesting because they begin to reveal some ofthe patterns in the business environment in which we operate, butmy main reason for referring to them is related to my openingparagraphs. What does labour turnover mean in these ®gures? Thede®nition given in the report, which the authors agree is imperfectbut is at least reliable, is the number of leavers in a set perioddivided by the average number employed during that period, times100.

At ®rst sight it seems surprising that, given the turmoil of forcedseparations over the period from downsizing activity in so manyorganizations, overall turnover is as low as it is. But it is even moresurprising: the calculation method actually increases the turnoverpercentage when there has been a major reduction of the

Strategic Change, Vol. 6, 185±186 (1997)

Editorial What does it mean?

workforce, because the average employment used in the equationfalls. This worried me, and sent me back to the sample. No doubt319 organizations, out of 5000 canvassed, can be representative,but are they in this case, or am I alone in believing that in 1995actual turnover rates could well have been much higher?

Do the ®gures mean what they say? At least all the detail isdeclared in the summary, so anyone using the data is forewarned.

D. E. Hussey

Reference

IPD, (1996). IPD Labour Turnover 1996 Survey Results, Institute ofPersonnel and Development, IPD House, Camp Road, London SW194UX.

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CCC 1086±1718/97/040185±02 Strategic Change, July 1997& 1997 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.