It’s a new year, and the merry-go-round has started. The strategy is off, the talent isn’t delivering, the pipeline is way off where it should be, and the technology is never delivering.
Sound familiar? Well, it should do. That’s about 80% of the global market right now. So, how do you go about changing that?
As a veteran of go-to-market strategy, I’ve come to understand that the most prolific pressure point in delivering results might be on the bottom line, but make no mistake, your hiring strategy or lack thereof creates it.
People have been the problem since the dawn of time, yet we allow ourselves to blame the tech and not the lack of adoption of the tech, the budget, the lack of business acumen required to deliver with the allocated budget and the pipeline, where we often know the people are underperforming but don’t invest in upskilling or allow the wrong people to remain in place for too long.
So you see, people are the crux of your success — not tech, not budgets, but people, and in 2025, as a founder or business unit lead, you have to be ruthless in hiring and firing decisions. But before you run out and wield the axe, let’s look at how you can track your people to ensure you are on top of how they feel in the workplace.
First, let’s set the metric you are gearing up for here: retention. Your goal is to establish who the best-fit talent for the journey is at this point and how you can further understand and support them. This goes well beyond the obligatory quarterly 1:2:1.
This requires some method of tracking sentiment. In my business, I use HubSpot’s Service Hub for customer success. I quickly learned I could use its Customer Satisfaction Surveys (CSAT) and Net Promoter Score (NPS) features to track employee engagement. Here’s how I did it.
Related: 3 Ways To Boost Retention Through a Positive Employee and Candidate Experience
Metrics to track employee engagement
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Average length of employment in months per employee: The length of time talent remains gives insight into the culture. Good talent stays long, great. Bad talent stays long, and it’s not so good.
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Employee onboarding score: All talent should have defined onboarding and a timeframe. Tracking how the employee concludes their onboarding with a HubSpot workflow/sequence gives a quality score at the company and contributor level.
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The employee happiness score per month: Using a CSAT survey, you can repurpose this into a monthly happiness score to track the workforce sentiment month on month.
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The number of HubSpot certifications per employee: As part of the onboarding, you can set tasks to complete relevant certifications and track them over time. Use this for upskilling and tech adoption.
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Employee NPS (per employee and per team): Use the NPS survey to understand how individual employees feel about the workplace.
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Total number of employees per month: Use HubSpot to track employee attendance to understand who and how often employees are present.
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The number of training hours per employee: Track the number of employees’ training hours monthly/yearly from onboarding to continuous education and development.
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The number of 1:1s completed per employee per quarter: To keep employee development on track, track your leaders by the number of 1:1s held per quarter.
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The number of sick days per employee per quarter: Track employee sick days through HubSpot. Use a submission form for sick days and a calculation property to add the days and report on that.
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Percentage of employees attaining personal development goals: Add new goals to employee onboarding workflows and track the number of completed tasks.
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Average time to fill open positions: Track the time it takes to fill open positions, from posting a job on the company website to taking it down or tracking it as filled using a CRM “date from” and “date to” property.
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The ratio of internal promotions to external hires: Track the number of employees promoted compared to those hired externally to assess how well the organization nurtures talent internally.
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Number of employees in key roles: Track hiring for key roles and the length of time they remain unfilled and filled to see how talent in those roles consistently performs.
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Average response time to employee queries or concerns: Using an internal ticketing pipeline, track employee responses to queries or concerns by open ticket time.
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Internal job application rate: The rate of internal applicants for advertised roles is tracked by applications, contributors and the number of opportunities individuals apply for.
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Employee peer recognition rates: Use a customized CSAT or NPS survey to allow employees to recognize and rate their peers.
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Employee work-life balance score: Use an NPS to track quarterly work-life balance and score teams, business units and the broader organization.
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Percentage of employees meeting strategic KPIs for organizational goals or business objectives: Use the “tasks” functionality in the Service Hub to track employees’ achievement of goals and objectives and report on the number and timeframe achieved.
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Total number of customer interactions per employee: Track the monthly sales, marketing and customer service activities on a per-rep basis.
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Number of vacation days taken per employee per month: Track the number of holidays taken per month and correlate that against the team’s performance.
Related: How to Support Employees and Improve Retention With a Strong Company Culture
There you have it. Using tools commonly adopted in the workplace, including your CRM, your marketing, sales and services tech, you can correlate company performance against your employee engagement and see how it affects your overall results.
In my opinion, a great working culture is critical to your long-term success, and people are the backbone of the results. Focus on how they feel and behave; your go-to-market strategy may just perform somersaults this year.
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