This hands-on workshop equipped attendees with practical tools to identify, define, and apply meaningful metrics across employee programs. Michelle Deneau, Senior Director, People Experience and Analytics at Cloudflare and Justin Purl, Head of People Analytics and Insights at Zscaler, guided participants through frameworks and exercises that help turn people data into business-relevant insights. Attendees walked away with a clearer understanding of how to design programs with measurable impact.

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Framing the problem: not all metrics are created equal

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The session opened with a common challenge. Program teams often default to reporting on what is easiest to measure rather than what matters most. To address this challenge directly, Michelle and Justin encouraged participants to differentiate between three key categories:

• Operational metrics: Tactical reports used for process tracking
  
  
• Program evaluation: Metrics that assess if an initiative met its goals
  
  
• Business outcomes: Indicators that connect employee experience to strategic objectives
  
  

Michelle emphasized that aligning data with program intent is essential. Not everything that can be counted counts. The focus should always be on insights that enable better decisions and demonstrate tangible value.

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Building a framework for metrics that matter

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The core of the session revolved around a practical design framework. Teams were challenged to think of employees and managers as customers. With that lens, they explored what these internal customers need in order to be successful, and how metrics can help identify opportunities, measure experience, and drive outcomes.

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Key questions included:

• What experience are we trying to create?
  
  
• How do we know if it’s working?
  
  
• What will success look like to stakeholders?
  
  

Justin guided participants through examples from onboarding, learning and development, and workplace events. Using the questions above, each example showed how the right metrics could reflect results and inform what to do next. This helped ground the framework in real-world scenarios and made the learning directly applicable.

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Metrics in action: workshop breakout

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Attendees split into functional groups to apply what they learned. Each group selected a real program and used a “Metrics Canvas” to brainstorm meaningful KPIs across the employee lifecycle. Teams discussed:

• What metrics matter most to business leaders
  
  
• How to measure employee engagement effectively
  
  
• How to build in measurement from the start
  
  

The activity reinforced that the best time to think about evaluation is before a program launches. Groups shared their takeaways, which ranged from simple pulse surveys to linking program outcomes to retention and performance data.

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Key takeaways

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• Define metrics in three tiers: operations, program success, and business impact
  
  
• Start with objectives and design metrics that support them from day one
  
  
• Treat employees and managers as customers of your experience programs
  
  
• Use both quantitative and qualitative data to tell a full story
  
  
• Share insights in a way that supports decision-making and trust

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Slide deck: https://docsend.com/view/sdrq666kh2in23bm