All of our risk indicators are designed to highlight teams that might need more support in order to reach their full potential.

Friday Pulse research has shown that low Happiness, Appreciation, and Work-life balance scores are strong indicators that a team may be at risk of losing members.

Why staff turnover is a risk

High turnover rates can create impact team dynamics, as well as increasing recruitment and training time and costs; all of which can reduce overall productivity. Frequent departures can demoralize remaining team members, making them feel uncertain or overburdened. Additionally, high turnover can disrupt project timelines and affect client relationships. Addressing flight risk is essential to maintaining team stability and ensuring a positive, productive workplace culture.

Understanding flight risk: Our evidence-based approach

Flight risk, or the likelihood of employees leaving, is influenced by multiple factors related to their overall experience at work. Friday Pulse’s research data highlights that employees are more likely to consider leaving when they feel undervalued, disconnected, or overwhelmed by work demands. Low Happiness scores often point to broader dissatisfaction, while poor Appreciation scores signal that employees aren’t feeling recognized for their contributions. Similarly, low Work-life balance scores suggest that employees feel overburdened, making them more likely to leave in search of a healthier work environment.

In our estimate of risk levels, Happiness has the largest impact, then Appreciation, followed by Work-life balance. The respective weights are 2x for Happiness, 1x for Appreciation and, 0.5x for Work-life balance. Tracking all of these factors helps organizations identify teams that are struggling and enables them to implement strategies to retain talent before dissatisfaction turns into resignation.

Improving a team’s Happiness score

• Ask the team to discuss their happiness and experience of work regularly, either weekly or monthly, matching the rhythm of your Friday Pulse questions.
• Use the Presentation from the Dashboard to guide these discussions and make them more structured and engaging.
• Recognize the Thank yous given and received each week, highlighting this shared appreciation and people’s positive contributions. Encourage more thank you sharing, within the team and to other teams, to encourage gratitude from outside the team too.
• Learn more about improving team happiness here

Improving a team’s Appreciation score

• Ask the team to discuss where and what types of appreciation are missing, such as from other teams, leaders, within the team, or from clients/customers.
• Encourage the team to create a shared picture of what “good” appreciation looks like, defining what would lead people to score a 4 or 5 on the Friday Pulse Appreciation question.
• Use this shared vision to develop actionable steps to move closer to that “good” standard.
• Explore more ideas on improving appreciation in Things for teams to try: Improving Appreciation

Improving a team’s Work-life balance score

• Discuss as a team if the team’s low Work-life balance score is a long-term or short-term issue.
• Long-term issues might be created by different understandings of the working norms (e.g., expected hours, out-of-hours availability). As a team, collaborate on finding ways to reduce excessive working hours and ensure team members hold each other accountable for healthy work patterns. Leadership may also need to support the team by helping them to re-prioritise and redistribute work loads.
• Short-term issues are often due to approaching deadlines or types of project work. Clarify when the workload will ease, de-prioritise what you can, and plan in time when the workload eases to find ways to mitigate the impact of similar pressures in the future.
• Find more ideas in Things for teams to try: Improving Work-life balance