The $7.5M Line Item Your CFO Has Never Seen.

Walk into any 250-person company in the country. Pull the P&L. The largest line items will be people: payroll, benefits, payroll taxes. Roughly $25M at average compensation.

Now ask the CFO: "What's our second-largest people cost?"

They'll cite recruiting, retention, training, technology. They will not cite the answer that matters most: $7.5M leaking out of how teams work together.

"If you don't have a crisis, make one. You get people excited, motivated, and drive the necessary change."

— Michael Dell

Michael Dell says if you don't have a crisis, make one. The $7.5M leak in your business is the crisis you didn't know you had — until you measured it.

How $7.5M Adds Up

SKOR's data across hundreds of organizations puts the average Profit Leak at $30,000 per employee per year. Three components:

• $18K per employee in productivity loss — Gallup's data shows 56% of workers don't clearly know what's expected of them. The drag on productive output is 18%.

• $8K per employee in preventable turnover — SHRM puts replacement cost at 1.5–2x annual salary. The factors driving turnover aren't compensation; they're the SKOR muscles.

• $4K per employee in misalignment and blind spots — the perception gap between leaders and teams creates $4K of compounding waste per person.

At 250 employees, that's $7.5M a year. At 500, $15M. At 1,000, $30M. Every year. Recurring.

Why the Number Is Invisible

Three measurement systems run in parallel inside most mid-market companies:

• Finance measures what hits the ledger. Profit leak doesn't hit the ledger; it leaks before it gets there.

• Operations measures what hits the dashboard. Profit leak doesn't show up on the dashboard; it shows up as "weird quarter" or "underperforming team."

• People measures sentiment. Profit leak isn't a sentiment; it's a behavioral gap with a dollar figure attached.

The number lives in the seam between these three systems. SKOR exists to measure the seam.

What 30% Recovery Looks Like in 90 Days

Teams that run the diagnostic and act on the top three priorities recover 30–50% of their Profit Leak in the first phase. At 250 employees, that's $2.25M–$3.75M back inside one quarter.

The mechanism isn't complicated. The diagnostic surfaces the three highest-leverage gaps. Leaders pick two and act on them with a 90-day cadence. The behavioral change shows up in productivity, retention, and revenue per employee.

It's not a 6-month transformation. It's the inverse: stop doing what's leaking and the leak slows.

How to Find Your Number

The Profit Leak Calculator gives you a low-high estimate based on headcount and average compensation. It takes 90 seconds. It's free. The full diagnostic gives you the exact figure broken down across the 7 Muscles, with a prioritized roadmap.

Not a feeling. Not a score you file away. A Profit Leak Number you act on.

Calculate your number: getskor.com/profitleakcalc