Senior leaders and HR teams should regularly review progress and success in areas like culture, engagement and basic employee value propositions. Below are just a few examples of important HR metrics to track as part of this process:

Employee engagement – Measuring employee engagement not only helps to understand whether employees are bringing their hearts and minds to work every day, but it also provides opportunities to build better trust with employees and develop stronger leadership.
Diversity – Organizations vary with regard to their diversity for a lot of reasons, but the metric itself should be front and center so it becomes a focal point of future progress.
Goal achievement - Successful companies are able to set goals at all levels of the organization and work consistently to achieve them. Tracking individual goal achievement can help identify where the organization may be having challenges before it becomes a business performance issue.
Turnover rate – Whether focusing on voluntary or involuntary turnover, there is a huge cost associated with turnover. It's important to know that not all turnover is bad – a company wants to be retaining their top talent, while managing poorer performers out.
Vacation days used - Even when companies offer generous PTO policies, there are many reasons that employees may not use them. When employees don't take vacation, burnout increases, engagement declines and the outcome is less productivity.
Absenteeism/sick days taken – Since the pandemic, people are more diligent about staying home from work when they aren't feeling well, and there's a greater understanding from employers when people need to take time off to care for sick family. A sudden increase in sick days taken, especially if vacation days remain unused, could signal that it's time to check-in.

Other key metrics to help gauge the effectiveness of HR programs and initiatives include compensation/award metrics, internal promotions, and time and/or cost of hire. In addition, revenue per employee – a number derived by dividing revenue by the total number of employees – can provide a strong perspective on the strength of the workforce when evaluated in comparison to benchmarks.

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