I was with some HR blogging friends at a conference recently and we were talking shop. Someone had a great idea for a blog post, but said they couldn’t find any stats to back it up, so they weren’t going to write about it. My exact quote back was, “I just make stats up!”

To be fair, when I do make stats up, I tell you! It’s something like, “9 out of 10 employees who are fired (by me) want to kill their boss!”

My stats aren’t just made up! Sackett Stats are based on nothing more than twenty years of my experience working in the trenches HR and TA, across multiple industries. To be honest, though, some idiot will one day read this and think it’s a real number, stick it in their Forbes article, and they a few weeks later you’ll see it at your local SHRM meeting in a presentation deck!

Sackett Stats! Like Pew Research, but far less likely based on actual research.

Sackett Stat #36 is called Boss Block.  The concept of this statistic comes from the number of years that are between you and your boss in age. The lower the number, the less likely you’ll ever be promoted, and the more likely you are to turnover.

The average over/under Boss Block number that pushes a person to leave an organization is 5.3 years.

If your boss is more than 5.3 years older than you, you are less likely to leave the organization, believing you will eventually get a chance to be promoted. Obviously, the farther apart in age, to your boss, the less likely you are to leave on your own. If your boss is 5.3 years or less to your age, you are highly likely to leave, believing there is no chance in hell you’ll ever get promoted because you’re being Boss Blocked for promotion.

Sackett Stats – like most stats, but more believable.