We know that the Cost of Attrition is major drain on organization value, and many people decisions and program investments share attrition reduction as a goal. The MAIN - Minimum Attrition Improvement Needed - is a metric that can be used to asses such investments
The concept is to compare the investment being made in employee compensation (or other program costs) to the cost of attrition for the role. The investment should have a reasonable chance of decreasing attrition enough to cover the investment, or at least a better chance than other investments.
Consider an example where an organization is experiencing 20% annual attrition in a job family with 500 employees (100 leavers per year). The organization estimates that each leaver costs the organization $50,000, which results in an annual cost of attrition of $5 million. Certainly a problem worth solving!
One proposal is to provide a $500 monthly stipend to cover personal expenses, which would invest $6,000 per employee or $3 million total.
For the $3 million investment to add value, it needs to save $3 million in attrition costs, which is 60% of its annual attrition cost. The MAIN is 60% - anything less than a 60% improvement in attrition (in this example from 20% to 8%, which sounds unlikely) would actually degrade value.
The definition of MAIN is:
Once computed, it is helpful to then multiple the current attrition rate by the MAIN, which equals the attrition rate that would be realized. This is often a good test of reasonableness, as the resulting attrition rate might be well below reasonable expectations.
MAIN can be used to compare different investments relative to different costs of attrition and across organizations to consistently frame the impact needed. It leads to interesting debates about whether such improvements are likely to be realized based on the investment alone, and often drives a more creative exploration of both the costs and causes of attrition.
