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Read time: ~6-7 minutes

Hey Reader 👋🏻

This is much later (and much longer) than usual... Sorry for that, but we are going to go on a 3 week People Product Performance Metric discovery together, so strap in!

I asked at the end of last week's newsletter what I should write about this week, with a landslide victory of 81.3% of the votes, "Performance Metrics for People Product Teams" took the win.

Here's my dirty little secret... I was kind of hoping you wouldn't go for that option 😅

I am still experimenting, researching and exploring different ways to track and measure general health of the PX Product as well as the performance of People Product Teams more broadly. Everything I share in this newsletter and in all my content streams is a combination of lived experience + logical application of relevant frameworks, which in some cases includes a few leaps of imagination tied to concrete research and a hypothesis about what I think would work.

All of that to say, what I will share with you today is more of a "thinking out loud" brain dump of my latest thoughts on People Product team performance metrics. I want to be 100% clear and upfront; I have not personally implemented all of these metrics during my time as a Head of People and I certainly haven't implemented them all at one time in a coherent and structured way.

My hope is that you will see, as I do, the relevance and logic behind these metrics and how they could be applied to the People Experience product lifecycle. Some combination of the metrics I share could form the spine of your People Product Performance tracking.

Honestly, it makes me want to dive back into an operational HoP role again to put this into action, but that's not the role I play anymore. I sit outside of the operational delivery so that I can do this deep work, which I hope enables you to deliver more impact in your role 🙏🏻

You will have to let me know if I am succeeding in that or if I should pack it all in and go get a real job again😆
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So, with these caveats in place, this will be Performance Metrics for People Product Teams (Part 1/3) - Thinking out loud

To make sure I am anchoring my hypotheses in reality of what is already being tried and tested, in Part 2 I will share actual metrics being used by some of my favourite People Product teams and Leaders 🚀

I suspect part 2 of this series will bring some validation, some challenge, and some new metrics to consider. That's the hope anyway.

I will end this mini-series with a consolidation of my thinking, some recommendations and a template (format TBC) which you can use to create your own People Product Performance Dashboard 📊

There isn't one way to measure performance and the nuance of culture and context always come into play, so wherever we end up at the end of this 3-week discovery, you should still think critically about which metrics are most important for you to track in your own team. Hopefully, you will be able to do that with some inspiration and a usable performance metric framework which you can adapt.

Performance Metrics for People Product Teams - Thinking out loud 🧠

Ok, let's get into this 👀

I map the end-to-end PX Product Lifecycle with the same stages as a subscription product, from GTM and retention to offboarding and Win-back. Logically, this means we should be able to apply (at least be inspired by) performance metrics used other business units during each stage of the customer journey.

💡TIP: A good move at this stage might be to go and speak with the Heads of each of these functions. Ask them directly what they track, why they track it and how they use that information to assess performance and make decisions.

You can even show them this visual (👇🏻) so they can see how you are thinking about the PX Product - you might find those conversations lead to great insights AND access to performance metric frameworks, dashboards, and templates that already exist which you can repurpose for the People function.

Download this graphic: The PX Product Lifecyle v 1.2.png​

Without getting too into the weeds, broadly I think you can separate People Product team performance metrics into 3 categories:

1. 🚑 PX Product Health - Value Creation (Employee and Business)​
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   How do we know the People Experience product we are building is creating value for employee users and stakeholders, whilst driving business growth? (“product market fit”)
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   ​Definition: PX Product Health measures the mutual value exchange between the business and its employees. A healthy PX creates value for employees (fulfilling needs, enabling growth, improving experience) and through employees driving business performance, revenue and growth. Essentially, a positive PX Product health will be an indicator that you have achieved product market fit.​
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   ​Possible PX Product Health metrics: (parallels to product/UX metrics like customer NPS, activation, retention)​
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   ​📊ELTV (Employee Lifetime Value): This requires some deeper explanation, so over to Jessica Zwaan for that! Essentially, this involves adapting the concept of Customer Lifetime Value to measure the total net value an employee creates for the organisation from day one to exit (and a little beyond ecit due to the "Halo effect").
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   ​📊Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS): Measures employee loyalty and satisfaction by asking how likely they are to recommend the company as a great place to work. A high eNPS indicates strong overall employee sentiment (similar to customer NPS for product-market fit). Caveat, I think eNPS as it is currently used by many organisations is a complete waste of time. If you are going to use eNPS scoring, make sure you understand why you are doing it and think carefully about how and when it's best to deploy - a quarterly eNPS survey as a tick-box exercise is beyond useless.
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   ​📊Time-to-Value (Time to Productivity): How quickly employees get from hire (day 1) to full productivity or competence in role. Shorter time-to-productivity means the “PX product” is delivering value (to employee and business) faster.​
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   ​📊Activation Rate (New Hire Activation): Similar to Time-to-Value, but this should be focused on the percentage of new employees who reach a defined productivity or engagement milestone within a set time, i. e: If 85% of new engineers commit code to the codebase within their first month, your onboarding activation is high (you would have similar activation milestones defined for each role and function).​
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   ​📊Retention Rate and Churn (Employee Turnover): Retention rate is the percentage of employees who stay with the company over a period (or conversely, turnover/churn rate is who leave). This is akin to customer retention/churn in product metrics, it reflects the ability of the People Experience to retain its “users”. Several layers to dig down into here, but I will keep it high level for brevity.
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   ​📊Advocacy Rate: % of hires made via referral from existing employees, alumni, and unsuccessful candidates. Possibly tricky to track with 100% accuracy, but a high measurable advocacy rate is a strong leading indicator that your PX Product is delivering value.​
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2. ✅ People Product Team Effectiveness - Agile Execution​
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   How effectively is the People team working to deliver new PX features, benefits and programmes of value? (velocity, quality, cadence etc)
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   ​Definition: This category measures how effectively the People team runs itself like a product team to deliver PX initiatives. It focuses on the People team’s processes, agility, and stakeholder management. Just as a software product team uses sprints, backlogs, and retrospectives, a People Ops team can adopt agile rituals to continuously improve the employee experience. The metrics here assess delivery velocity, process health, and how satisfied the “customers” (employees and business stakeholders) are with the People team’s work.​
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   ​Possible People Product Team Effectiveness metrics: (parallels to agile team performance and stakeholder success)
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   ​📊 Sprint Velocity (Delivery Throughput): The average amount of work the People team completes per sprint (e.g. in story points or number of tasks). This indicates the team’s capacity and throughput over time. Monitoring velocity trends helps forecast how quickly the team can implement backlog initiatives and reveals improvements or impediments.​
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   📊 Backlog Health: An indicator of how well the People team’s project backlog is maintained and prioritised. Metrics can include the ratio of defined (ready) vs. undefined tasks, average age of backlog items, or % of high-priority items without progress. A healthy backlog (up-to-date and aligned with strategy) ensures the team works on the most valuable initiatives and can respond to new needs quickly.​
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   📊 Team Ritual Effectiveness (Continuous Improvement): Measures that the People team is consistently reflecting and improving, similar to agile retrospectives. For instance, track that a retrospective happens at the end of each sprint and that action items from retros are completed.​
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   📊 Release Cadence (Launch Frequency): How frequently the People team rolls out new initiatives, policies, or improvements. This could be measured as number of new “feature launches” per quarter (e.g. new benefit programmes, HR system updates, or experiments run). A steady release cadence shows the team works iteratively rather than in big, infrequent projects.​
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   📊 On-Time Delivery Rate: The percentage of People initiatives delivered on schedule or within the intended sprint/quarter. This metric reflects planning accuracy and execution efficiency. High on-time delivery builds trust with leadership that the People team can execute predictably.​
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   📊 Stakeholder Satisfaction: Feedback from key stakeholders (employees, managers, and leadership) about their satisfaction with the People team’s support and outcomes. This can be quantitative feedback through surveys or qualitative from user feedback interviews etc. High satisfaction indicates the team is meeting the needs of its internal customers.​
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   ​📊 Experimentation Rate: How often the People team runs experiments or tries innovative solutions. This might be the number of A/B tests or pilot programmes conducted in a quarter for example. A higher rate suggests the team practices a “test and learn” approach rather than relying on assumptions. ​
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3. 🚀 Initiative-Level Impact - Growth Funnel Metrics for PX Initiatives ​
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   How are we assessing the success and impact of individual programmes / projects delivered? What is our rate of applied learning from our experiments and prototypes?
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   ​Definition: This category applies a growth-hacking or go-to-market (GTM) lens to individual People initiatives. Whenever the People team launches a specific programme or policy (for example, a new onboarding programme, a mentorship initiative, a performance coaching tool, etc.), you should measure its success with campaign-style metrics. Just as a marketing team tracks conversion funnels and ROI for a product launch, People Ops tracks how employees move from awareness to adoption of an initiative, engagement levels, where they drop off, and what the return on the effort is. These metrics ensure each initiative delivers tangible value and informs future investment decisions.
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   ​Possible Initiative Impact metrics: (parallels to marketing funnel and experiment KPIs like conversion, engagement, and ROI)
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   ​📊 Experiment/Test Success Rate: For teams running experiments or pilots in People programmes, this metric captures the percentage of tests that achieve their success criteria. It answers “out of the new ideas we trial, how many actually work?” A low success rate isn’t bad if you’re experimenting (many ideas won’t pan out), but tracking it helps set expectations and improve hypothesis quality.
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   ​📊 Conversion Rate (Participation Uptake): The proportion of the target employee population that takes the desired action in an initiative. This is analogous to a marketing conversion funnel. Define the “conversion” based on the goal: for instance, the percentage of employees who sign up for a new programme out of those invited, or the percentage of new hires who complete all onboarding steps out of those who started. A higher conversion rate means the initiative’s value proposition and communication successfully motivated action.
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   ​📊 Engagement Rate (Depth of Use): How actively and consistently employees engage with the initiative after the initial conversion. Not just did they sign up, but are they using it? Metrics here include usage frequency, completion rates, or active participation levels. High engagement means the initiative is providing ongoing value (similar to active user metrics in a product).
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   ​📊 Drop-Off Rate: Identifies where employees disengage or fall out of the initiative’s funnel. It’s the complement to engagement – measured at specific stages. For example, in a multi-step process, measure the percentage of employees who started but did not finish. High drop-off at a particular step highlights friction or dissatisfaction at that stage.
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   ​📊 Return on Effort (ROE): Evaluates the impact of an initiative relative to the effort or resources invested, akin to an internal ROI. It weighs the “outcomes” achieved against the “input” (measured in team hours or budget). This helps prioritise initiatives that deliver the most value for the least effort (Impact ROI). Example: Say a new automated onboarding system took 100 hours of People Ops work to implement but saved managers 500 hours collectively and raised new-hire productivity, the ROE is high (5:1 in hours saved alone).
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   ​📊 Initiative-Specific Satisfaction or NPS: Feedback from participants on the initiative itself. For example, after a new performance review, ask attendees to rate how useful it was. A high satisfaction score or a positive NPS for the initiative indicates it was well-received and likely impactful. This qualitative metric adds context to the quantitative ones above.

Ok, I promised a brain dump of "thinking out loud" and that's what you got! I know there is a lot of nuance missing here and some practical examples of each metric applied in context is going to be very useful. We can get to those in Part 2 and Part 3 of this People Product Performance Metric mini-series.

For now, I hope this is giving you some good food for thought and you now have a place to start when thinking about how to measure the performance of your People team which focus on value creation, rather than the activity tracking of traditional "HR metrics".

It's worth noting, I generally focus on start-ups / scale-ups, headcount ~50 through to 500, so that's the lens I am placing over all of this. In larger orgs, the same logic applies, but the complexity and scale increases. For now, let's just focus on the general concept as an approach to measuring People Product Team performance.

Ultimately the goal for you is to track and communicate value and impact delivered by the People team, not just proving ROI but also uncovering insights that lead to business growth and drive better decision making.

We are not short of data in HR and People Ops... In fact, we are often overwhelmed by the volume we have access to. The challenge comes in making that data relevant and usable, crucially it's about not just measing activity and observation, but measing impact and insight.

OK, that’s a wrap for this week. Part 2 of 3 will follow next week 👀

Grab your coffee and open up your inbox same time next week for more insights, tips, and resource flags on how to smash HR silos, add strategic value and turn your People function into a growth driver 🚀

With love,

Luke ✌🏻

PS, when you are ready you might like...

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