READ TIME:

MINS

How to measure employee well-being

Published on

Nov 4th, 2025

Reviewed on

Nov 4th, 2025

Updated on

Nov 5th, 2025

Written by

Talkspace

Reviewed by

Laura Magnuson, MA, MS, LAMFT, VP of Clinical Engagement

When used properly, employee well-being metrics can help you drive organizational success. Your employees’ health and happiness don't just increase productivity. They influence everything from retention to engagement, morale, and overall job satisfaction.

Learning how to measure employee well-being can be a transformative experience for companies. It takes more than counting sick days or tracking engagement scores, though. Employee wellness metrics that blend hard data with honest conversations will enable you to create systems that genuinely support your people's well-being and help them thrive.

Below, we share how to measure well-being at work by showing you what works, what doesn’t, and research-backed ways to successfully assess both quantitative and qualitative employee wellness metrics.

Quantitative employee well-being metrics

Quantitative employee well-being metrics are measurable. These metrics highlight patterns of health, productivity, engagement, and job satisfaction. Using quantitative data to assess employee well-being offers insights that can be tracked and scaled over time, across teams, and throughout different locations.

How to measure employee wellness through quantitative metrics:

Absenteeism rates: Monitor the frequency of employee absences due to illness, stress, or burnout. Pay attention to the causes of absenteeism at work as well. The data you collect can help identify potential mental health challenges or unaddressed workplace issues.
Turnover rates: It’s important to know what’s driving exits if you have high turnover rates. Tracking these metrics will highlight gaps in support or identify a toxic work culture that might be contributing to why people are leaving your company.
Productivity levels: Low productivity levels can be a reflection of stress, disengagement, or other challenges your employees are facing. Watch for changes in output, increasingly missed deadlines, or an uptick in project incompletion rates.
Survey engagement scores: Survey platforms make it easy to gauge employee satisfaction. Culture Amp and Workday are easy-to-use platforms that create standardized questions. These surveys are strategically designed to reveal employee energy levels and assess how valued your employees feel.
Wellness and benefits programs: If your company offers Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs), you should track sign-ups and EAP utilization. You can also monitor usage rates of other perks you provide, such as counseling, gym memberships, and wellness events. This information shows you how often your team is actively using the support resources that’s available to them.

By regularly measuring employee well-being, you’ll likely start to see patterns related to stress levels, job satisfaction, and engagement among your employees. Comparing data over the months or years can offer deeper insight that you can use to guide future efforts. For example, focusing on engagement scores can help you achieve higher profitability and reduce absenteeism rates. One study found that companies with highly engaged teams and strong engagement scores are 14% more profitable, have 78% fewer employee absences, and see, on average, a 23% increase in profitability.

Despite its benefits, quantitative data alone isn’t always enough to capture how employees truly feel or why they may not be using available benefits. While objective, numbers alone can overlook the human side of workplace well-being. For this reason, qualitative employee well-being metrics are just as important to track.

Qualitative employee well-being metrics

Qualitative employee well-being metrics offer the stories behind the numbers. Feedback through interviews, conversations, or anonymous surveys helps explain why changes occur, not just what changes have happened. For example, understanding why productivity dropped can be just as important as recognizing that it did in the first place.

How to measure employee wellness through qualitative metrics:

One-on-one check-ins or interviews: Having direct conversations provides employees with a safe space to share their experiences, concerns, and successes in a way that surveys alone may not capture.
Focus groups: When you bring together small groups that share stories, you can uncover cultural or emotional patterns that might be impacting overall well-being in your company.
Open-ended surveys and responses: Providing employees with a safe space to offer detailed feedback allows you to gain valuable insights into their overall emotional well-being. The information they provide can help you identify sources of stress, exclusion, or burnout.
Anonymous suggestion boxes: Some employees need reassurance of safety before they’re willing to share negative experiences or concerns.

You should offer several channels for feedback to encourage vulnerability without risk, including:

Physical suggestion boxes
Online portals
Secure forms
Anonymous surveys
Third-party hotlines
External feedback partners
Quick polls
“Ask-me-anything” sessions with leadership and management
Digital chat channels

Unlike hard data, qualitative measures often help you capture specific mental health dynamics that impact company culture. Keep in mind that employees are more likely to share honest feedback if they feel genuinely listened to and their psychological safety is prioritized.

Combining qualitative and quantitative metrics enhances the likelihood of obtaining effective data that highlights trends and identifies root causes. Together, this information will help you identify gaps, allowing you to take effective action to enhance employee wellness.

“Employees want to know what is going to happen with information that is shared. They also want to know that changes will be made, so ensuring that employees have an understanding of what will be done with the information and changes that may be made will help to get them to participate.”
_{- Laura Magnuson, MA, MS, LAMFT, VP of Clinical Engagement}

Choosing the right employee well-being metrics

Once you’ve committed to tracking metrics, you need to decide what type of information will be the most insightful. Every workplace is different, and metric efforts should reflect your culture, size, and goals.

Use this framework when choosing what to track so you can get honest feedback and information from your employees.

Relevance: Will a metric truly show what matters most to your employees? For example, tracking absenteeism might be important for some workplaces and organizations, but you may find that open-ended feedback is more useful for your goals.
Actionability: Can you act on the data you’re collecting? Ensure you can effectively utilize the information you’re soliciting to implement meaningful change. For example, if research indicates that high turnover or high stress scores are impacting your company, can you adjust your policies in response?
Feasibility: Is the information you’re collecting consistent and accurate? It’s essential to consider the resources you’ll need to analyze the information you’re collecting and develop a response.

Considering all facets of well-being

Make sure you’re also tracking all areas of well-being, including:

Physical well-being: Track absences, participation in programs, and use of health benefits.
Mental well-being: If you have EAPs, review sign-ups and engagement scores. You can use stress indicators and any qualitative feedback you’ve collected on psychological safety to guide your mental health efforts.
Social well-being: Use surveys to assess general feelings on inclusion, sense of belonging, and peer support opportunities that employees find most beneficial.
Financial well-being: It’s always a good idea to assess income satisfaction and participation in financial wellness programs.

Using both short-term and long-term metrics offers a more comprehensive—and realistic—view of well-being over time. For example, you can use regular pulse surveys, which are quick surveys you regularly put out (monthly or quarterly) to get a snapshot of how people are feeling in real-time. But you also want to track long-term trends, like year-over-year retention and engagement rates. Using a layered approach like this helps you capture a comprehensive sense of well-being, instead of just what’s happening right now in your organization.

Best practices for measuring employee well-being

How you collect data is as important as what you decide to track. Trust and transparency should remain your top priority. When employees feel monitored or judged, their feedback is less likely to be authentic and effective.

‍To get the best data, follow these simple but effective practices:

Ensure anonymity: Employees should feel safe and protected when sharing sensitive information or feedback with you. Encrypted survey platforms are worth the investment, and it's essential to clarify that responses won’t be traced or tracked.
Communicate clearly: You’ll have better engagement and responses if you explain why you’re collecting well-being metrics and how any data given will be used. Building trust increases participation and ensures you’ll have more data to work with.
Measure consistently: Find a cadence that works for your business. It might be quarterly, semi-annually, or annually, but make it a priority and stick to it so employees know what to expect. Consistent efforts help you spot patterns over time.
Act: If employees are willing to take the time to give honest feedback, you should make every effort to respond quickly. Sharing results and outlining next steps fosters long-term trust and demonstrates that you value their input.

Tools and resources for employee well-being measurement

While once time-consuming and tedious, technology today makes measuring well-being and workplace stress easier than ever. It’s the best way to ensure you’ll get accurate and actionable responses from your employees. Utilizing powerful platforms and technology enables you to implement and streamline the process.

Survey platforms

Employee experience survey platforms, such as Qualtrics and PerformYard, were specifically designed for gathering feedback. These effective tools offer both quantitative engagement scores and qualitative comments you’ll find helpful. For optimal results, look for a platform that provides tailored questions, automated distribution, and real-time reporting, so you can quickly identify trends and take action.

HR dashboards and analytics tools

HR dashboards and analytics tools, such as those in BambooHR, enable you to track and view employee wellness metrics at a glance. They provide data on time-tracking, absence rates, benefits utilization, and retention, offering a comprehensive and well-rounded view of your work environment. These tools let you quickly compare data across teams and track changes over time.

Mental health and wellness platforms

Employees today expect organizations to provide mental health benefits at work. Online wellness and mental health platforms, such as Talkspace, bundle clinical support, self-help tools, and other resources with engagement reporting, making it easy to track usage, growth, and the impact of your wellness investments. Dashboard reports help you identify where teams are engaging the most and whether any groups might benefit from targeted outreach.

Talkspace helps you measure improvement in areas like:

Therapy session attendance
Stress scores
Emotional resilience
User feedback

Measure your investment in employee well-being

Measuring the ROI of mental health support can be hard, but when employees use the benefits you offer them and experience reduced stress levels or improved engagement, you’ll have clear evidence that your efforts are making a meaningful difference—for your employees’ mental health and your organization as a whole.

If you’re ready to learn how much you can save by investing in employee well-being for your workplace, check out the mental health ROI calculator from Talkspace. You can use it to forecast impact, demonstrate value, and learn how to measure employee well-being in your organization. Request a demo today to learn more and improve employee well-being.

‍

Sources:

‍