15 Talent Management Metrics for HR to Consider in 2025
As talent management continues to evolve, companies shift their focus to align with changing business priorities. Still, one thing stays the same: tracking the right talent management metrics always matters.

Talent management metrics are (or should be) a key ingredient of an organization’s talent management. But what metrics should you use and why?
In this article, we explore 15 talent management metrics that would help you assess and improve your talent strategy. You’ll also find best practices and real-world examples to support your approach.
Contents
What are talent management metrics?
Why measure talent management metrics?
Talent management metrics examples
HR best practices for using talent management metrics
What are talent management metrics?
Talent management metrics are tools for measuring the inflow, throughflow, and outflow of talent in your organization. As such, they provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of your talent management strategy, helping you understand its strengths and weaknesses.
Why measure talent management metrics?
When done well, talent management fuels better performance, attracts top talent, and motivates and retains (high-performing) employees. But without data, it’s hard to know whether your efforts are paying off.
Tracking talent management KPIs helps you:
- Identify what’s working and what’s not
- Spot issues before they escalate
- Justify your strategy to leadership and stakeholders
- Align your talent work with broader business goals.
Talent management metrics examples
We’ve grouped the metrics into three categories: talent acquisition, talent development, and retention/engagement. Each gives insight into a different part of the employee journey.

Talent acquisition metrics
These metrics track the efficiency and effectiveness of your hiring efforts:
1. Time to hire
Time to hire, also called ‘time to accept,’ is one of the most common recruitment metrics. It measures the time it takes for a candidate to move through the hiring process from the moment they apply until they sign their contract. As such, time to hire is an excellent indicator of both the efficiency of your recruitment process and your candidate experience.
To calculate your time to hire, you can use the following formula:
Time to hire = Offer acceptance date – Date of first contact
For example, if a candidate applies for a position on July 1 and accepts an offer on July 30, then the time to hire would be:
30 (July 30) – 1 (July 1) = 29 days
$100,000 / 100 = $1,000
2. Cost per hire
Cost per hire shows the average amount your organization spends to bring in a new employee. It includes sourcing, advertising, recruitment, onboarding, referral bonuses, signing incentives, admin, and compliance-related expenses.
The standard formula to calculate cost per hire is:
Cost per hire = (Internal recruiting cost + External recruiting costs) / Total number of hires
For example, if you hire 100 people this year and spend $100,000 on the hiring process, your cost per hire would be:
This metric also helps highlight the financial impact of turnover and, therefore, allows HR to make a strong case for better talent management initiatives.
3. Quality of hire
Quality of hire is more complex to measure, but very informative. It is often measured by someone’s performance rating, but can also be assessed by a combination of performance appraisals, new hire retention rates, and engagement scores.
While there’s no single formula, many organizations track this using a blend of:
- New hire performance data
- Retention rates after 90 days or one year
- Hiring manager satisfaction ratings.
A high quality of hire indicates that your recruitment and selection processes are aligned with business needs.
Build your skills in HR metrics and dashboards
Tracking talent management metrics is only valuable if you know what to do with the data. To improve retention, optimize development, and align HR with business goals, you need to turn these metrics into actionable insights.
In AIHR’s HR Metrics & Dashboarding Certificate Program, you’ll learn how to choose the right metrics, interpret them in context, and design dashboards that inform better decision-making. The self-paced course gives you the tools to elevate your talent strategy through data.
4. Offer acceptance rate
The offer acceptance rate shows the percentage of job offers candidates accept. It reflects how attractive your offers are and whether your hiring process is aligned with candidate expectations.
The formula to calculate your offer acceptance rate is:
Offer acceptance rate = (Number of offers accepted / Number of offers made) × 100
If you extend 50 offers and 40 are accepted, the offer acceptance rate is:
(40 offers accepted / 50 offers made) x 100 = 80%
A low acceptance rate can signal issues with compensation, communication, or job fit. For example, if declines are frequent in specific roles, you might address this by discussing salary expectations earlier or listing pay in job ads.
5. Time to productivity
Time to productivity (TTP) measures how long it takes a new hire to become fully productive in their role. Tracking time to productivity is essential to gain insights about your talent management practices, as it can uncover information about:
- Onboarding effectiveness
- Recruitment issues
- Resource allocation
- Skills gaps.
To calculate time to productivity, you can follow these steps:
- Define what “fully productive” means for each role.
- Determine what the start and end points are.
- Apply the formula:
Time to productivity (TTP) = End point – Start point
For example, if a junior sales representative starts on June 1 and becomes fully operational on September 1, their TTP is:
TTP = September 1 – June 1 = 3 months
Talent development metrics
These metrics help you understand how employees are growing, upskilling, and advancing within the organization.
6. Training completion rate
It is one thing for people to sign up for a course, but another for them to complete it. The training completion rate tells you how many participants finish a learning program.
A low completion rate (e.g., 10 out of 500 participants finishing) may point to problems with engagement, course design, or simply a lack of time during the workweek.
Tracking this metric helps uncover where improvements are needed to make training more accessible, relevant, or better integrated into daily workflows.
7. Training effectiveness
This metric assesses whether your training is actually making an impact on performance, knowledge, and ultimately, business outcomes. It also helps determine your learning programs’ return on investment (ROI).
There are various ways to measure training effectiveness. One of the most common ways to do so is by using Kirkpatrick’s Four-level Training Evaluation Model. Here’s a simplified version of what this model looks like:
- Level 1: Reaction — Did employees find the training useful and engaging?
- Level 2: Learning — What new skills or knowledge did they gain?
- Level 3: Behavior — Has there been a change in how they perform on the job?
- Level 4: Results — Has the training contributed to broader business goals?
This approach allows HR to tie training outcomes to real performance indicators rather than relying solely on feedback forms or completion data.
8. Internal promotion rate
This metric measures how often employees move up within the company. A high promotion rate suggests the organization’s talent management is effective and that there are plenty of opportunities for employees to grow.
To calculate your promotion rate, you can use the following formula:
Internal promotion rate = (Total number of internal promotions / Total number of employees) x 100
You can calculate this company-wide or within specific teams. For example:
- Company-wide promotion rate: 7%
- Marketing team promotion rate: 1%
This kind of comparison helps identify where development pathways might be blocked due to a lack of training, unclear career paths, or other obstacles.
9. Succession planning effectiveness
Succession planning ensures critical roles can be filled internally, helping maintain continuity and reducing reliance on external hires. To measure its success, you can track a few key succession planning metrics, including:
- Percentage of critical roles filled internally: A higher percentage indicates stronger internal talent pipelines.
- Bench strength: The number of ready-now or ready-soon candidates available for key roles.
- Time to readiness: How long will it take for identified successors to be prepared for the role.
- Succession coverage ratio: The proportion of critical roles with at least one designated successor.
These metrics give a more complete picture of your organization’s succession health. For example, if most critical positions are still being filled externally or lack clear successors, that may signal the need to strengthen internal development efforts.
Much of this data can be pulled from your recruitment and performance systems and tracked over time to see whether your succession efforts are improving.
10. Internal mobility
Internal mobility tracks how often employees move across roles, teams, or projects. It includes:
- Promotions
- Lateral transfers
- Job swaps
- Project assignments
- Secondments.
Encouraging internal mobility has several benefits, including improved retention and employee satisfaction rates, lower hiring costs, and higher innovation levels.
To measure your internal mobility rate, you can use this formula:
Internal mobility rate = (Number of internal movements / Average number of employees) x 100
A higher mobility rate likely indicates that employees are finding ways to grow in your company and that you are managing their skills and talents effectively.
Retention, turnover, and engagement metrics
These metrics help track employee stability, identify problem areas, and gauge overall organizational satisfaction levels.
11. eNPS
Employee Net Promotor Score (eNPS) is a simple but powerful indicator of employee engagement and loyalty. It’s based on one question: “How likely are you to recommend this organization as a place to work?” Employees respond on a scale from 0 (not at all likely) to 10 (extremely likely).
Scores are categorized as:
- Promoters (9–10): Loyal and enthusiastic employees
- Passives (7–8): Satisfied but not fully committed
- Detractors (0–6): Unhappy employees who may hurt company morale or reputation.
The formula is:
eNPS = % of Promoters – % of Detractors
Tracking eNPS over time lets you monitor the impact of engagement initiatives and respond quickly to emerging issues.
12. Voluntary turnover rate
Voluntary turnover refers to employees who leave the organization by choice. Common reasons include job dissatisfaction, career progression, relocation, management issues, or a lack of learning opportunities. Your voluntary turnover rate can tell you a lot about the effectiveness of your talent management practices. Here’s how to calculate it:
Voluntary turnover rate = (# of employees who left voluntarily in a given period / # of employees in the same given period) x 100
For example, if 33 people leave voluntarily from a workforce of 300 over a quarter, the turnover rate would be:
Voluntary turnover rate = (33 ÷ 300) × 100 = 11%
Monitoring this metric helps identify whether retention efforts are working and where deeper analysis may be needed (e.g., by department or tenure).
13. Absenteeism rate
The absenteeism rate or absence percentage measures the rate of unplanned absence due to illness or other causes. It can be measured for teams, individuals, or the entire organization, and it can give you an idea about any negative trends in the health, wellbeing, and engagement of your employees.
Absence in the workplace can occur due to:
- Illness (physical or mental)
- Stress or burnout
- Caregiving responsibilities
- Low morale or disengagement.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) measures the absence rate as follows:
Absenteeism rate = Number of absent days / Number of available work days in a given period
This formula can be used for any given time period. To calculate an absence rate for your organization, you will need employee absence data.
14. Employee retention rate
The employee retention rate shows the percentage of employees who stay with the organization over a specific time period. It helps assess whether your employee experience, development opportunities, and career pathways are working.
Here’s how to calculate it:
Employee retention rate = (Total number of employees − Total number of employees who left) / Total number of employees × 100
For example, an HR tech scale-up had 300 employees at the start of the year. During the year, 24 employees left the company. The employee retention rate would therefore be:
([300 − 24] / 300) × 100 = 92%
A consistently strong retention rate signals effective talent management. When rates drop, deeper analysis by team, function, or tenure can uncover underlying causes.
15. High potential (HiPo) turnover rate
High potential turnover measures the number of high-potential employees (HiPos) who leave the organization. HiPos are employees whom the company has identified as having the ability, aspiration, and engagement needed to succeed in senior positions.
Your high potential turnover rate indicates the effectiveness of your succession planning and efforts to retain high-potential employees. To calculate your HiPo turnover rate, you can use this formula:
HiPo turnover rate = HiPos who left the company / HiPos in the company
For instance, if your organization has identified 20 HiPos and three of them leave during the year, your HiPo turnover rate would be (3 ÷ 20) × 100 = 15%. This number becomes especially meaningful when compared to your overall turnover rate. If your HiPo turnover is significantly higher, it may indicate gaps in development support, a lack of advancement opportunities, or misaligned expectations.
If your high potential turnover is above average compared to the rest of the organization’s workforce, it may be time to take action and dive further into the issue’s origin. Exit interviews can be a valuable source of information about why your HiPos are leaving.
HR tip
Consider taking a professional course to learn more about how to use talent data and reports to optimize your company’s talent management practices. AIHR’s Talent Management Certificate Program is a good option to look at in that regard (don’t just take our word for it, check the many reviews!).
HR best practices for using talent management metrics
There are some talent management best practices to consider when determining your talent management metrics, including:
- Start with business goals: Don’t track data just because it’s available. Tie each metric to a concrete business objective such as improving retention, speeding up hiring, or preparing future leaders. This way, the insights you gather will more likely support decisions that move the needle.
- Balance leading and lagging indicators: Leading indicators help you spot trends and anticipate problems before they surface. Lagging indicators show what’s already happened. A good mix helps HR stay both proactive and reflective. For instance, if your business goal is to build stronger employee capabilities, a leading metric might be time to proficiency, while a lagging one could be training completion rate.
- Make metrics easy to understand and share: To create a broader understanding of your talent management practices and get support from senior leaders and stakeholders, ensure your metrics are easy to understand and share, for instance, by using an HR dashboard.
- Use metrics to prompt action, not just reporting: Talent management metrics are a means to an end; they provide valuable insights about what is working and what needs improvement in your talent management activities. As such, it is crucial to take action based on the outcomes of your reporting.
- Monitor, review, and update your metrics regularly: In most organizations, business goals (constantly) evolve, and therefore, so should your talent management metrics.
Over to you
Effective talent management is the foundation for attracting, developing, and retaining your employees. To get a clear picture of how your efforts are working out, it’s essential to determine the set of talent management metrics and KPIs you will use. The examples listed in this article can be a great place to start.
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