What Does Turnover Really Cost?
A free calculator for ABA owners, supervisors and the people who work for them. It counts what losing one person costs your company, and what it costs the children and families you serve. Change any number. There's nothing to sign up for.
The first version of this calculator, which I built in 2025, contained an error. I fixed it with this version. This version also counts what the money leaves out: the therapy hours a child never gets back, the family that starts over with someone new, and the people who stay and carry the extra load.
Karen Chung, founder, Special Learning
The job
Start with your own numbers. The examples are my 2025 working numbers for a well-run agency.
When someone leaves
Finding the next person
Every step it takes to get one new person to their first day. The examples come from a search we ran in 2022 for one Pennsylvania agency: in 25 days we reached 900 people, 108 were interested, 36 passed a phone screen, 29 were interviewed and 24 received offers.
*In smaller agencies, the person doing all of this is usually the clinical director or the owner. They block out time to call, screen and interview, and then candidates don't show up. Every one of those hours could have gone to a child's therapy or to supervising the people already on the team. That's why this button counts their time at what the hour would have billed, $85, because that's what the clinic actually loses. The same is true of interviews. It's a broken system.
Getting them ready
While the job is open
The first weeks with someone new
These hours are usually billed. The cost lands on the child, who spends them getting to know a new person instead of learning.
The children and families
What one person leaving costs your company
What it costs the children and families
Across your team, in a year
| People who leave | 0 |
| Cost to your company | $0 |
| Therapy hours children lose | 0 |
| Times a child starts over with someone new | 0 |
What if fewer people left?
What would it take to keep them?
How we got these numbers
Every line below uses the numbers above. Change any of them and this updates.
The costs no calculator can count
The child
Every week the job is open, that person's hours with the children don't happen, unless someone else covers them. Then a new person starts from zero: building trust, learning the program, learning the child. Some children lose skills they had. Some go back to behaviors they had stopped.
"Turnover stops clients from making progress because we lose valuable time. And NOBODY can get back the time that's been stolen from the client."
Karen Chung, 2022
The family
Parents wait. They let another stranger into their home and teach their child to someone new, again. Some decide ABA doesn't work for their child and stop.
The people who stay
They cover hours, lose the schedule they were promised, and train the next new person. Supervisors spend their time retraining instead of supervising. That is how one resignation becomes the next one.
Your reputation and your ethics
Families talk, referral sources notice, and the next person you want to hire reads your reviews. The Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts also speaks to this directly. Behavior analysts "act in the best interests of the client to avoid interruption or disruption of services" (3.14), "only accept clients whose requested services are within their identified scope of competence and available resources (e.g., time and capacity for case supervision, staffing)" (3.03), and "actively identify and address environmental conditions" that "may interfere with or prevent service delivery" (2.19).
Families and funders
When a new person is billed while still getting to know a child, someone pays for hours that build rapport instead of skills. Usually that is a family or a funder.
Why we built this
Most owners I talk to believe their technicians will leave for a dollar. In my experience the bigger reasons are hours that disappear when sessions are cancelled, being sent out alone with too little training, supervisors they rarely see, and no way to grow without going back to school. Each of those is something an organization can change.
I also designed a study to measure what we can't count yet: whether better training, steadier supervision and real parent engagement keep people longer, and whether children make more progress when they do. If your agency wants to be part of answering that, write to us at contact@special-learning.com.
Where the numbers come from
- The examples are working numbers for a well-run agency, not research findings. Every one of them is meant to be replaced with yours. The full math for every line is in "How we got these numbers" above.
- Pay, hours and billing rate: my 2025 example of a technician earning $35,000 a year, working 30 billable hours a week at $65 an hour, and my 2025 example of a BCBA earning $70,000 at $85 an hour.
- Recruiting a technician: from a search we ran in 2022 for one Pennsylvania agency. In 25 days we reached 900 people; 108 were interested, 36 passed a phone screen, 29 were interviewed, 24 received offers, and 6 of the 24 went missing. That works out, for every person who starts, to about 50 people reached, 6 interested, 2 phone screens, 1.6 interviews and 1.3 offers. The minutes for each step are my estimates. Job boards cost thousands of dollars a month.
- No-shows: from our years of recruiting, about 40% of technician candidates and 20% of BCBA candidates don't show up for a phone screen or interview. The time set aside is counted either way.
- Recruiting a BCBA: the steps are my estimates. Replace them with yours.
- If you use a recruiter: we charged $5,000 for a technician and $15,000 for a BCBA, all-inclusive. Most agencies can't pay that.
- Orientation, training, supervisor time, materials, weeks to fill the job and weeks to get up to speed: my 2025 working assumptions. Replace them with your own.
- Hourly pay is annual pay divided by 2,080 hours. A week of pay is annual pay divided by 52.
- Hours nobody works while the job is open cost you what you would have billed for them, minus the pay you didn't spend.
- Hours spent getting up to speed are usually billed, so they are counted against the child's progress, not your revenue.
- If a family leaves, the cost is what you would have billed for their remaining hours, minus the pay for those hours.
- Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts, Behavior Analyst Certification Board, updated 08/2024, standards 2.19, 3.03 and 3.14.
Training that helps people stay
Onboarding, supervision and parent training for your whole team, from the people who built this calculator.