Organizations rely on turnover rates, engagement scores, reasons for leaving, etc. to benchmark data to understand how they compare. They provide valuable context and help leaders evaluate performance relative to peers.
But benchmarking is often asked to do more than it can. It is treated not just as a reference point but as an explanation. That is where problems begin.
The Role Benchmarking Actually Plays
Benchmarking serves an important purpose. It helps organizations answer a fundamental question:
“How do we compare?”
That question matters.
If turnover is higher than similar organizations, it signals a potential issue. If engagement scores lag behind peers, it highlights an opportunity to improve. Benchmarking brings clarity to where an organization stands within the broader market. But comparison is not the goal.
The goal is to build a better workforce experience than the market. And that requires moving beyond comparison.
Where Benchmarking Falls Short
Even when used correctly, benchmarking has a natural limit. It can show you where you stand. It can highlight areas of relative strength or weakness. But it cannot explain what drives those outcomes within your organization. It does not answer the more important question:
“Why is this happening here?”
That distinction matters because organizations that look similar on paper often experience very different workforce realities beneath the surface.
Benchmarking tells us what is common. It does not tell us what is causal.
Shared Categories Do Not Mean Shared Problems
Benchmark data tends to group employee behavior into common categories like Career, Management, and Work-Life Balance. These categories show up consistently across organizations and for good reason. They reflect the broad conditions that influence employee decisions, but they do not tell the full story.
Our research has shown that fewer than 8% of organizations share the same turnover profile (2017 Retention Report), defined as having the same top three Reasons for Leaving. That means more than 90% of organizations navigate a different combination of drivers. Even when two organizations both identify Career as a top Reason for Leaving, the underlying issue may be entirely different.
For one, it may be limited advancement opportunities.
For another, unclear career paths.
For another, a mismatch between role expectations and employee goals.
The category is the same. The cause is not.
Categories Describe Behavior. They Do Not Explain It.
This is where many retention strategies break down. Organizations act on categories instead of causes. They see Career and invest in development programs. They see Work-Life Balance and adjust scheduling. They see Management and introduce training initiatives.
Sometimes those actions lead to improvement, but they often fall short because the underlying issue was never fully understood.
Categories describe what employees experience at a high level. They do not explain why those experiences happen.
What It Takes to Understand Turnover
Understanding why employees leave requires more than comparison. It requires:
- direct input from employees
- consistent data collection
- structured analysis
- the ability to interpret patters within the context of your organization
The ability to interpret patterns within the context of your organization is where many struggle. It’s not because they lack the data. It’s because they lack the clarity.
The Right Way to Use Benchmark Data
Most organizations already know the categories behind turnover. What they often lack is confidence in what those categories mean within their own workforce. And that is where retention and engagement strategies either succeed or fail.
The work cannot stop at comparison if the goal is to continually become a better employer. It has to move toward understanding and improving.
Improving retention requires understanding what is happening beneath the averages by understanding what drives your workforce before those patterns become turnover.