SaaS startups track CAC, LTV, burn rate, and runway like gospel. But when it comes to People Operations, most companies stick to the basics—time to hire, turnover rate, and engagement score—without digging deeper into the key performance indicators (KPIs) that truly drive business outcomes.
The right People Ops metrics don’t just tell you what’s happening. They help you predict what’s coming next. Today, we’re diving into three underutilized but powerful People KPIs that can give you a competitive edge. Let’s get into it.
KPI #1: ⏳ % On-Time Hires
Everyone tracks time to fill. But, time to fill is an average that can hide harsh realities—some roles take a long time to close and others close unexpectedly fast.
What actually matters is predictable hiring, or being able to state with confidence: “If we open [insert role name] on [Month DD, YYYY], we will fill it on [Month DD, YYYY]." That's where % on-time hires can help.
% On-Time Hires = % of the time a role is filled within +/- 2 weeks of the target start date.
Just like predictable SaaS revenue enables better forecasting, investment decisions, and sustainable growth, predictable hiring ensures teams are staffed on time to hit business goals. If revenue is volatile, the business suffers—if hiring is unpredictable, execution stalls and money is wasted.
Example: Filling a $150k role on May 15, 2025 vs March 1, 2025 may not seem like that big of a miss, but that's approximately $32k ($150k / 52 weeks * 11 weeks) that was held on the budget and not redistributed to a one-time spend. I bet some marketers could have thought of a way to spend that to drive some more inbound leads!
Take action: Use this red-yellow-green (RYG) recruiting pipeline deep dive template to start tracking original target start dates and current anticipated start dates to see where you’re at-risk or off-track.
KPI #2: 📈 Talent Mobility Rate
Startups talk a big game about career growth, but few measure what portion of their workforce is experiencing the most visible forms of growth — promotions and title changes.
Talent Mobility Rate = % of employees who are promoted or voluntarily transfer within a given time period (e.g., quarterly, annually).
Tracking talent mobility rate is important because low internal mobility leads to higher attrition risk, particularly among top performers who have other options to move their career forward. Moreover, if you’re always hiring in external talent to fill new opportunities, your internal talent bench will be weak, making you less able to respond to rapid market changes.
Take action: Build the infrastructure to track talent mobility rate by pulling a change history report from the company’s HRIS. Look for any changes in title and/or level in the previous year, then divide that by the number of employees you had at the start of the year. Then, figure out how to update this information on an ongoing basis. Job change workflows in tools like Asana can be helpful.
KPI #3: 🌹 Return on SaaS Employees (ROSE)
Many companies track Revenue per Full Time Employee (FTE), and that’s good. But, Revenue per FTE has been around long enough that it’s begun to fall prey to Goodhart’s Law:
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
P&L owners and managers have learned to game or optimize for Revenue per FTE by shifting labor costs to contractors.
When that happens, you lose the value of Revenue per FTE as an efficiency metric and need to start looking at ROSE to accomplish your original goal — running an efficient business.
Return on SaaS Employees = Recurring Revenue / (Employee + Contractor Expenses)
Take action: Learn more about ROSE here and evaluate whether Revenue per FTE, ROSE, or a combination of the two makes the most sense to track at a company-wide level for your business. I often use these efficiency metrics to evaluate whether a company is hiring too rapidly to stay profitable or be competitive for their next VC raise.
Keep in mind that these efficiency metrics shouldn’t be applied at the individual level or at the team-level for cost centers.
📌 The Four-T Playbook: Tip, Trick, Tactic, or Template
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👉 Tactic: To make sure KPIs drive action, assign an Owner to each People Operations KPI on a team dashboard and set a target review cadence.
Final Thoughts:
Most People teams underutilize data. But the best ones use leading indicators and lagging indicators to look at talent acquisition, engagement & culture, team member development, and overall business efficiency.
Which People Ops KPIs are you tracking? Reply and let me know—I’d love to hear from you.
Until next time,
Melissa
