The 5 Best Metrics to Track Culture-Driven Performance
Culture is not just about how your organization feels. It is about how it performs.
Too often, companies separate culture and results. They think of culture as the warm and fuzzy stuff, while performance lives in the realm of data and dashboards. But here’s the truth: the most effective organizations understand that culture drives outcomes. If you want to measure success, you have to measure culture.
The challenge is knowing where to look.
In this article, we explore the five best metrics to track culture-driven performance. These are not vanity numbers or abstract ideas. These are measurable, actionable insights that show how your values show up in the day-to-day—and whether they are helping or hurting your goals.
Why Culture and Performance Are Deeply Connected
Let’s start with the big picture.
Companies with strong cultures consistently outperform their peers. According to research from Deloitte, 82 percent of executives and HR leaders believe that culture is a potential competitive advantage. Those who intentionally manage their cultures see 516 percent higher revenue growth over a 10-year period compared to those who do not. Source
Culture is not separate from performance. It is performance.
It affects how decisions are made. How teams collaborate. How problems are solved. How people show up.
But culture can’t just be talked about. It must be measured. And not just with annual engagement surveys that gather dust.
Here are five essential metrics that give real visibility into how your culture is impacting business outcomes.
1. Employee Engagement Scores
Engagement is more than satisfaction. It is a measure of emotional commitment.
Engaged employees are more productive, more loyal, and more creative. They go beyond checking boxes. They care. And when employees care, performance follows.
According to Gallup, companies in the top quartile of employee engagement are 21 percent more profitable than those in the bottom quartile. Source
What to track:
Overall engagement score trends
Team-by-team comparisons
Scores related to purpose, leadership, and recognition
Open-text responses that reveal cultural strengths or red flags
How to act:
Engagement scores are only as useful as the conversations that follow. Review results with managers. Use them to spark reflection and co-create solutions with teams.
2. Voluntary Turnover Rates
Turnover is one of the clearest signals of culture health.
When people leave on their own, especially high performers or new hires, it’s worth asking why. Exit interviews help, but the data is even more powerful when you track it consistently across teams, roles, and time periods.
According to SHRM, the cost of losing an employee can be as high as 50 to 60 percent of that employee’s annual salary, with total costs reaching 90 to 200 percent when you include training and lost productivity. Source
What to track:
Total voluntary turnover rate
Turnover in the first 12 months
Turnover by department, manager, or demographic
Reasons for leaving from exit interviews
How to act:
High turnover often points to cultural mismatches—between values and daily experience, or between expectations and reality. Dig into patterns. Then take action to align your culture with what people actually need to thrive.
3. Manager Effectiveness Ratings
Culture is experienced through people. And the most direct influencer of culture for any employee is their manager.
If you want to know how your culture is really doing, ask people how supported, trusted, and empowered they feel by their manager.
According to a McKinsey study, 75 percent of employees say the most stressful part of their job is their immediate supervisor. Source
What to track:
Manager ratings from engagement surveys or 360 reviews
Feedback frequency and quality scores
Promotion and attrition rates among direct reports
How to act:
Support your managers with coaching and clear expectations. Do not assume they know how to build culture. Teach them how. They are not just executing strategy. They are translating it.
4. Feedback Participation Rates
In a strong culture, feedback is not feared. It is welcomed.
How often are your employees offering feedback? Are they responding to surveys? Participating in 1:1s? Speaking up in retrospectives? Or are they silent?
Silence is data too. It often points to fear, distrust, or apathy. On the other hand, high participation in feedback loops shows psychological safety—a key driver of innovation and performance.
What to track:
Survey response rates
Upward feedback submissions
Participation in team reviews or debriefs
Frequency of documented 1:1 meetings
How to act:
If participation is low, start with curiosity. Are people skeptical that their feedback matters? Is the process too complicated? Use transparency and follow-up actions to rebuild trust.
5. Values-in-Action Observations
This is the most nuanced, and arguably the most important, metric of all.
Values-in-action means asking: Are our company values showing up in the way people make decisions, collaborate, and lead?
You can measure this through qualitative feedback, observations, or scorecards during performance reviews. You can also include prompts in surveys that ask employees to name times they’ve seen values in action.
What to track:
Self-reported examples of values in action
Manager ratings of values alignment
Behavior-based recognition linked to values
Stories shared in all-hands or newsletters that celebrate culture
How to act:
Review where your values are lived—and where they’re missing. This insight will tell you whether your culture is symbolic or real. It also tells you whether you’re hiring and rewarding based on what actually matters.
Culture Metrics Are Leadership Metrics
Measuring culture-driven performance is not just about keeping HR happy. It is a leadership imperative.
These five metrics give you the insight you need to:
Anticipate performance risks before they become problems
Create better alignment between values and execution
Hold leaders accountable for more than output
Drive engagement and retention from the inside out
When culture is tracked the right way, it stops being a slogan. It becomes a scorecard. One that ties directly to results.
Final Thoughts
You cannot improve what you do not measure.
But measurement only matters when it leads to action.
Track these five culture-driven performance metrics with intention. Use them not as judgment tools, but as conversation starters. Not to enforce control, but to enable clarity.
If you want a high-performing company, build a high-trust culture. And if you want to build a high-trust culture, start with the data that tells the truth about how your people feel and perform.
Culture is your strategy. These metrics are your compass.
Now use them to lead.