It's a new year and the cycle has begun. The strategy is off, the talent isn't delivering, the pipeline is far from where it needs to be, and the technology never delivers.

Sound familiar? Well, it has to be done. This is about 80% of the global market now. So how do you change it?

As a veteran of market entry strategyI've realized that the most fruitful pressure point in delivering results can be at the bottom, 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 technology rather than the lack of technology adoption, the budget, the lack of business acumen required to deliver with the allocated budget and pipeline, where we often know that people underperform, but don't invest in upskilling or let the wrong people stay in place for too long.

So you see, people are the core of your success – not technology, not budgets, but people, and in 2025, as a founder or head of a business unit, you need to be ruthless in your hiring and firing decisions. But before you run out and wield the axe, let's look at how you can track your people to make sure you're on top of how they're feeling in the workplace.

First, let's set the metric you're working on here: TAKING. Your goal is to determine who is the most suitable talent for the journey at this point and how you can further understand and support them. This goes beyond the mandatory 1:2:1 quarterly rate.

This requires a sentiment tracking method. In my business, I use HubSpot's Service Hub for Customer Success. I quickly learned that 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 increase retention through a positive employee and candidate experience

Metrics to track employee engagement

1. Average length of employment per month per employee: The length of time the talent remains gives an insight into the culture. Good talent stays long, great. Bad talent hangs around and isn't that good.

2. Employee login result: All talent should have defined onboarding and a time frame. Tracking how the employee completes their onboarding with a HubSpot workflow/workflow provides a quality score at the company and contributor level.

3. Employee happiness score per month: Using a CSAT survey, you can repurpose this into a monthly happiness score to track workforce sentiment month by month.

4. Number of HubSpot certifications per employee: As part of onboarding, you can set tasks to complete relevant certifications and track them over time. Use this for improving skills and technology adoption.

5. Employee NPS (per employee and per team): Use the NPS survey to understand how individual employees feel about the workplace.

6. Total number of employees per month: Use HubSpot to track employee attendance to understand who and how often employees are present.

7. Number of hours of training per employee: Monitor employee training hours monthly/annually from onboarding to ongoing education and development.

8. Number of 1:1s completed per employee per quarter: To keep employee development on track, track your leads by the number of 1:1s held quarterly.

9. Number of sick days per employee per quarter: Track employee sick days through HubSpot. Use a sick days submission form and a calculator feature to add days and report on it.

10. Percentage of employees achieving personal development goals: Add new goals to employee onboarding workflows and track the number of completed tasks.

11. Average time to fill open positions: Monitor the time it takes to fill open positions, from posting a job on the company website to removing it or tracking it as filled using a “date from” and “date to” CRM property.

12. Ratio of internal promotions to external hires: Monitor the number of employees promoted compared to those hired from outside to gauge how well the organization is doing nurtures talent from within.

13. Number of employees in key roles: Monitor hiring for key roles and the length of time they remain unfilled and filled to see how talent in those roles consistently performs.

14. Average response time to employee questions or concerns: Using an internal ticket pipeline, track employee responses to questions or concerns by ticket open time.

15. Internal job application rate: The internal applicant rate for advertised roles is tracked by applications, contributors and the number of opportunities individuals apply for.

16. Co-worker recognition rates: Use a custom CSAT or NPS survey to let employees recognize and rate their peers.

17. The result of the work-life balance of employees: Use an NPS to track each quarter work-life balance and teams, business units and the wider organisation.

18. Percentage of employees meeting strategic KPIs for organizational or business goals oobjectives: Use the “tasks” functionality in the Service Center to track the achievement of goals and objectives by employees and report on the number and time frame achieved.

19. Total number of customer interactions per employee: Track monthly sales, marketing and customer service activities on a recurring basis.

20. Number of vacation days taken per employee per month: Monitor the number of vacations taken per month and relate it to team performance.

Related: How to support employees and improve retention with a strong company culture

There you have it. Using tools commonly used in the workplace, including your CRM, marketing, sales and service technology, you can link company performance to your employee engagement and see how it affects your bottom line.

In my opinion, a great work culture it's critical to your long-term success, and people are the backbone of results. Focus on how they feel and behave; Your go-to-market strategy might just do somersaults this year.