Beyond the Dashboard: Measuring the Health of Your Culture

If you want to understand what a company truly values, don’t read the mission statement. Read the metrics dashboard. What gets measured gets managed, and what gets managed defines the culture.

And let’s be real: a lot of what gets measured is garbage. OKRs. KPIs. "Velocity." Numbers people drop into every conversation as fancy buzzwords to prove they're hustlin' with the best of them. But in most cases, these metrics aren't well-defined or grounded in what actually matters. And worse, they also aren't usually grounded in reality either... They often reduce complex, human work into checkboxes that can be gamed, manipulated, or misunderstood. Most OKRs are just wish lists with deadlines, and KPIs are slapped on without clear connection to purpose or people.

The obsession with quantifying everything traces back to industrial-era thinking when workers were treated as interchangeable cogs, and performance was measured in units per hour. Frederick Taylor's "scientific management" approach in the early 1900s gave birth to the modern productivity metric: a tool not for empowerment but for control. Sure, it worked when the job was to shovel coal. It doesn’t work when the job is to innovate, to empathize, or to solve messy problems with other humans.

Most companies still reward speed over sustainability, output over well-being, and endurance over innovation. We don't need to measure MORE, we need to refocus what we're even measuring. What would it look like if our metrics reflected whether people had the energy, space, and trust to do meaningful work?

Traditional Metrics Are Speaking—We’re Just Not Listening

Conventional metrics like attrition, disengagement, absenteeism, and sick leave tell a story. The problem is, most organizations don’t listen. Attrition is often viewed as a pipeline issue. Burnout gets chalked up to poor time management. Disengagement? Must be a Gen Z thing, bruh.

But these aren't random numbers, they're silent alarms. They signal unmet needs, broken trust, and systems that extract rather than enable value.

I once worked at a company that won a "Great Place to Work" certification. Leadership celebrated it like it meant something. But internally, we all knew we couldn't provide real answers. Despite being told the surveys are "anonymous", the way the results were delivered, managers could easily tell who had written what. And sometimes they'd even actively seek out the dissenter. I’m not exaggerating. I know people who were pulled into meetings and asked, "Was this your comment?"

So no, I don’t trust those glossy banners. I trust Glassdoor, Fishbowl, and Indeed reviews. I trust the quiet Slack DMs from colleagues saying, "Thank you for saying that out loud."

If your system punishes truth, your metrics are lies.

Metrics That Reflect Holistic Value

Before we dive into what we should be measuring, let’s be honest about what often happens when new metrics are introduced. We've all been there before.

They get weaponized.

Leadership turns them into league tables. Teams are compared, ranked, and pitted against each other without context, nuance, or any real conversation about why the numbers look the way they do or what the numbers are even actually telling us. Instead of fostering insight or improvement, the metrics become tools of blame, pressure, and performative progress.

This is why people worry about the visibility of their work. They know what comes next. More asks. More scrutiny. More "why did this take so long?" questions from someone with no understanding of the actual work. Suddenly, they’re justifying their humanity to a spreadsheet.

But metrics were never meant to be used AGAINST people. They were supposed to help tell a story:

• about the sustainability of the system,

• about the quality of what was being delivered,

• about the optimization of processes, etc.

Not the worth of the individual.

We are NOT interchangeable, despite what hustle culture has led us to believe. We are not robots. Context MATTERS. People are different. We bring different skills, backgrounds, perspectives, intelligences, and experience to the table. And if metrics can't make room for that, then they're not measuring anything that matters.

Metrics are meant to help us understand the health of the system. The sustainability of the culture. The degree to which an organization actually elevates the humanity of the people within it.

If we actually cared about the people doing the work, what SHOULD we measure?

Here are some alternatives:

• Psychological Safety Scores: Use recurring, anonymous pulse surveys or validated instruments like Google’s re:Work toolkit or Amy Edmondson’s team climate tools. Measure indicators such as whether employees feel safe to speak up, admit mistakes, or disagree without fear of retribution. Track changes over time and tie to leadership behaviors, not just team results.

  
  

• Innovation Downtime: Track whether teams are allocated dedicated, unstructured time each sprint / month / quarter to ideate, experiment, or reflect without deliverables attached. Could be measured by team calendars, surveys, or retrospectives reflecting whether they felt they had time to be creative or explore new ideas.

• Recovery Index: Measure how long it takes for teams or individuals to return to baseline performance or well-being after periods of intensity. This could include survey data on energy levels, use of PTO, workload tracking, or even biometric data if ethically collected (like sleep or stress markers from wearables).

• Retention for the Right Reasons: Use exit interviews, internal mobility data, and engagement surveys to assess whether people are staying because they feel valued, challenged, and connected—or just stuck or scared to leave. Focus on reasons for staying, not just raw headcount.

• Time Affluence: Survey employees about how much control they have over their daily schedule, how often they feel rushed or behind, and whether they have buffer time to think. Could be supported by meeting analysis tools and workload visibility dashboards.

• Ethical AI Usage: Assess whether AI tools are implemented with transparency, consent, and an intent to reduce human burden—not extract more labor. Evaluate by gathering feedback on AI impact, reviewing how AI decisions are monitored, and ensuring human oversight remains in critical decision loops.

And most importantly: Is anyone brave enough to ask and honest enough to listen?

The good news? Implementing these kinds of metrics doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. Many organizations already have roles that could support this shift, like HR business partners, employee experience leads, change managers, agile coaches, or internal communications professionals. With the right training and intent, these roles can collect, interpret, and advocate for these kinds of insights.

In some cases, outside consultants might be helpful to design the system or facilitate early trust-building. But this doesn’t need to be a massive overhaul or a budget-breaker. A few well-crafted questions, asked consistently and acted upon with integrity, can shift the entire culture.

The key is not to outsource the care—just the scaffolding.

To help companies envision the path forward, here’s a high-level breakdown of how these metrics can be supported:

Internal Ownership Options:

• HR Business Partners can facilitate pulse surveys, analyze engagement patterns, and coach managers on interpreting results

• Employee Experience Leads can identify themes across departments and track shifts in morale, time use, and well-being

• Agile Coaches or Scrum Masters can advocate for innovation time and recovery windows within sprints or program increments

• Internal Communications or People Ops can normalize discussion of psychological safety and create feedback loops

When to Bring in External Support:

• Designing the initial measurement framework with objectivity and expertise

• Facilitating trust when internal culture has a history of retaliation or abysmal psychological safety (read: TOXIC AF)

• Conducting confidential interviews or focus groups for qualitative insights

• Benchmarking with broader industry data

The goal is to make these metrics actionable and safe. You don’t need to build a new department. Just empower the right people with the right questions and, most importantly, with permission to care.

Companies Doing It Differently

Some organizations are waking up:

• Google identified psychological safety as the key to team performance in its Project Aristotle study. It became the foundation of how they nurture teams.

• Microsoft, under Satya Nadella, transformed its culture through humility, listening, and vulnerability from the top. It worked.

• Asana integrates mental health support into daily life, not just as a benefit, but as a norm.

• Indeed tracks employee happiness with real data, not fluff surveys.

These companies aren’t perfect, but they’re paying attention. They’re not just managing productivity, they’re stewarding culture.

Metrics Are a Mirror—Not a Weapon

If metrics aren’t helping humans thrive, then they’re not helping your business either. The point of measurement isn’t to control. It’s to reflect, refine, and reconnect with purpose all while driving business agility and innovation.

So ask yourself: What are you measuring? And what is that teaching your people about what matters?

Because if the answer is "output at all costs," the cost may be everything else.

Next up in the Holistic Value series: how we can use AI to give time back—not take more of it away.