2025 closed at roughly -- turnover, and 2026 is pacing toward -- annualized. Field service and skilled trades benchmarks generally land in the low to mid 20s, so Almcoe is carrying an elevated rate for a second straight year. At the current average headcount, each point of turnover is roughly one person per year, so closing the gap to benchmark is worth on the order of ten retained employees annually.
-- of all separations are voluntary, and of those voluntary exits, -- left for other employment. People are not drifting out or being managed out in large numbers; they are being actively hired away. When one reason code covers -- departures, it also means the exit data is too thin. "Other Employment" tells us where they went, not why they left.
Of the 2024 hiring class, -- have already separated. Of 2025 hires, -- are gone. -- of voluntary leavers departed inside their first twelve months, and the median voluntary leaver lasts about --. Recruiting is refilling seats that onboarding and early experience are not holding, which doubles the cost: ramp time is paid twice and customer facing consistency suffers.
Service accounts for -- voluntary quits, more than Install and Office combined, and -- of those Service quits happened inside the first year. This is the same population exposed to drive time burden, on call rotation, and the hottest wage competition in the DFW and Austin refrigeration market.
The November 2025 layoff cluster and the 2025 to 2026 job eliminations account for -- of the -- involuntary separations. Those were deliberate business decisions, not retention failures, and they should be reported separately so the true regrettable attrition signal stays clean. The remaining involuntary exits, conduct, attendance, abandonment, and no return from leave, cluster in short tenure roles and point at screening and early engagement rather than a broad discipline issue.
-- leavers had ten or more years with Almcoe. Some of that was retirement and restructuring, but several long tenured technicians and foremen left voluntarily for other employment. Every one of those exits takes institutional knowledge, customer relationships, and an informal trainer for the next hiring class.
Reading these patterns together, the most probable picture is a market competitiveness and early experience problem concentrated in field technician roles. Competitors are recruiting aggressively, and the offer that wins a technician away is usually some mix of higher base rate, less drive time, and a lighter on call load. New hires feel that gap fastest: they have the least loyalty built up, the widest pay variance against the market, and often the toughest route assignments. That would explain why 85 percent of quits cite another job, why first year cohorts are losing more than half their members, and why Service outpaces every other department.
The second signal is weak exit intelligence. Nearly everything lands in a single reason bucket, which means decisions about pay, scheduling, or management are being made without knowing which lever actually drives departures. The archive now captures termination notes, but they only help if the exit conversation happens and gets written down.
The third signal is a restructuring year layered on top of a retention problem. The layoffs and eliminations were intentional, but combined with voluntary quits they push total churn high enough that remaining teams feel the instability, and instability itself accelerates quits. The 2026 pace suggests that effect may already be in motion.
The one number to manage: regrettable voluntary turnover among technicians with under three years of tenure. That is where the volume is, where the cost is highest, and where intervention works fastest.
Run a wage comparison for Service and Install roles against the DFW, Austin, and East Texas refrigeration market, then make targeted adjustments for the one to three year tenure band before they become the next Other Employment entries. A retention raise is almost always cheaper than a replacement: recruiting, ramp, overtime coverage, and lost billable hours on a vacant truck typically cost more than the pay gap that caused the quit.
Structured 30, 60, and 90 day check ins with the service manager, a named mentor tech for every new hire, and a published wage progression path for the first two years. Track 90 day and one year retention as standing KPIs on this dashboard. The 2024 and 2025 cohort numbers say this is the single largest leak, and it is also the cheapest one to fix.
Require a short structured exit conversation for every voluntary departure, captured in the termination notes field the archive already stores: destination employer, pay delta, and the top stated reason. Pair it with quarterly stay interviews for high performers. Within two quarters the reason chart on the dashboard should stop reading Other Employment and start reading something actionable.
Route load and windshield hours are the classic hidden quit drivers in field service. Use the fleet telematics rollout to quantify drive time per technician, rebalance territories where the burden is concentrated, and review the on call rotation in the districts with the most Service quits. Less unpaid friction in the day competes directly with a rival's wage offer.
Tag layoffs, eliminations, and workforce reductions as structural, and report regrettable voluntary turnover as its own headline number. Leadership decisions get sharper when a deliberate reorganization is not inflating the retention alarm, and progress on the real problem becomes visible faster.
The abandonment, attendance, and no return exits sit almost entirely in short tenure hires. Add a realistic job preview to the interview process, covering routes, on call, and physical demands, and have the hiring manager set explicit first month expectations. Screening out a mismatch costs one interview; hiring one costs a truck, tools, and three months.