Attrition is when employees leave an organisation for personal reasons, which are normally outside of their employers’ control, for example, retirement, to study or to have children. A lot of the time these can be planned for in advance and they usually don’t have a negative impact as the employee is leaving to move on with the next stage of their lives. There is little an employer can do to prevent this from happening and is a natural part of the employee life cycle.
Employee attrition also covers redundancies and staff reorganisations if a company is in financial difficulties or changing their strategic direction. These are planned and budgeted for, so it is clear how much they will impact the organisation and they are not positions that usually need to be filled.