Topic starter
12/06/2026 8:59 pm
TL;DR: Employee turnover increases the operational burden of onboarding, offboarding, and access revocation across SaaS environments, according to Zluri, while SHRM data cited in the article says 20% of staff turnover happens in the first 45 days. The governance issue is whether identity lifecycle controls can keep pace with human movement and remote work.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Zluri: “The Cost of Employee Turnover and its Impact on ITAM, SAM SaaSOps Teams”.
By the numbers:
- The technology industry has an average employee turnover rate of 13.2%, according to LinkedIn cited by Zluri.
- Companies lose 17% of their new hires in the first three months, according to SHRM cited by Zluri.
- 20% of all staff turnover happens in the first 45 days, according to SHRM cited by Zluri.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when offboarding does not remove access across all SaaS systems?
A: Residual access survives in the systems that do not share the same source of truth, which leaves project tools, collaboration apps, and business platforms open after the employee has left.
Q: Why does employee turnover increase access control risk for IAM teams?
A: Turnover increases risk because every departure adds revocation work across multiple systems, and delays create a longer window for stale access.
Q: How do security teams know whether offboarding is actually working?
A: Security teams should measure completion, not process start.
Practitioner guidance
- Define a single offboarding completion state Require every departure to reach a documented end state that includes account removal, SaaS entitlement revocation, SSO closure, and asset recovery.
- Map all SaaS access paths before separation Inventory which applications, shared workspaces, and business systems an employee can touch before they leave, including delegated access and group-based permissions.
- Remove access in the same workflow that collects assets Do not separate device return, password reset, and application deprovisioning into different teams or queues.
Bottom line: Employee turnover is an identity governance issue because departures create a revocation burden across SaaS, SSO, and devices.
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This topic was modified 5 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group
12/06/2026 10:46 pm
Employee turnover exposes access control as a lifecycle problem, not a helpdesk task. The article shows that offboarding touches SaaS, SSO, devices, and data backup in one sequence, yet many organisations still manage those steps in fragments. That fragmentation creates revocation gaps even when policy exists. The lesson for identity programmes is that termination handling must be governed as a lifecycle control with explicit ownership and completion criteria.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Nearly 60% of IT leaders cite restrictive cost and complexity as a weakness of legacy identity governance, according to the 2025 State of Identity Governance Report.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Why does offboarding matter so much in identity governance?
A: Offboarding matters because any account, token, or certificate that survives an exit or role change is residual access waiting to be abused. In mature programmes, revocation is treated as a control outcome, not an administrative task. Without proof of removal, the organisation still has standing access.
👉 Read our full editorial: Employee turnover exposes offboarding gaps in SaaS access control
This post was modified 5 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group