Manufacturing performance and turnover. The respondents were also asked to report on their mills' labor efficiency, scrap rate, and turnover over the year before the survey. The variable labor hours was defined as the average number of labor hours (both direct and indirect) required to produce one ton of steel at a mill. Scrap rate was the number of tons of raw steel that had to be melted to produce one ton of finished product. Industry journals, interviews with mill managers, and pretest feedback indicated that these were common performance metrics used in the industry with which top human resource managers would be familiar. Because only human resource managers were asked to report on these measures, however, interrater reliability could not be assessed. The managers were also asked to indicate the number of production and maintenance employees who had "left the mill (either voluntarily or involuntarily) over the past year." This figure was divided by the total number of production and maintenance employees in a mill, derived from a separate