Length of Service

What is Length of Service?

This metric calculates the average length of service, or tenure, that your workers have within your business. You can further dive into details like team or age ranges with this metric for comparisons.

How to calculate Length of Service?

Total employment time / Number of employees = Length of service

Make sure you use the same format for the total employment time per employee (e.g. month, years).

Pros:

For larger companies you may want to know the average length of service you have within your teams, and also how that splits across different experience levels. A lower number in more senior positions, with a larger number in more junior positions may indicate that you have senior retention issues or need more support at a mid level.

Cons:

For new companies this metric may not give you any valuable insight, particularly if everyone has started around the same time, or if you are in your early stages and you are going through high turnover. For companies that have a small group of longer serving employees, with another group of newer serving employees, you might not be able to rely on the average, as a typical indicator, without removing those on the extremes or similar.

For example, if you have 4 employees with 5 or more years service, 12 employees with 3 or more years service, and 26 employees with 2 years service or less, you’d find the longer serving employees service gets diminished with this metric. In which case grouping employees with <2 years, >2 years, >4 years service may be more effective.