You've invested weeks of effort. You’ve built a sleek training hub, created detailed how-to guides, and designed a slick interactive checklist for your new hires. The programme is live. But now comes the most important question, and for many managers, the most difficult one to answer: is it actually working?
For too long, training success has been measured with vague, unreliable metrics. You ask a new hire, "How's it going?" and they give you a thumbs-up. You see them ticking off a static checklist, but you have no idea if the knowledge is sinking in or if their behaviour is changing. It's a black box, making it impossible to justify the investment or improve the process.
The good news is that by housing your training academy within HubSpot, you can illuminate that black box. You can move beyond guesswork and start tracking the metrics that matter, all from a single, powerful dashboard.
The Difference Between "Doing" and "Developing"
To measure training effectively, you need to track two types of metrics:
- Engagement Metrics (Leading Indicators): This is the "doing." It tells you if your new hires are actively participating in the programme. Are they watching the videos? Are they completing the tasks? High engagement is the first sign of a healthy onboarding process.
- Performance Metrics (Lagging Indicators): This is the "developing." It tells you if the training is translating into real-world results. Is the new rep closing deals faster? Is their data entry more accurate? This is how you prove the ROI of your programme to leadership.
A great training dashboard tracks both, giving you a complete picture of your programme's health and impact.
Building Your Training Success Dashboard in HubSpot
With HubSpot’s reporting tools, you can build a custom dashboard that brings all your key training KPIs into one place. Here are four essential reports to include.
Report 1: The Onboarding Progress Tracker
This report gives you an at-a-glance view of how new hires are progressing through their initial tasks.
- What it measures: Task completion rates.
- How to build it: Use the task reporting tool to create a chart showing the number of onboarding tasks completed versus outstanding. You can filter this by user and by due date.
- What it tells you: You can instantly see if a new hire is on track, falling behind, or stuck on a specific task, allowing you to offer support before they become overwhelmed.
Report 2: The Resource Engagement Report
This report shows you which pieces of your training content are actually being used.
- What it measures: Views on your key knowledge base articles, landing pages, or videos.
- How to build it: If your training hub is built using HubSpot’s website tools, you can use the standard website analytics reports. Create a report showing page views for your top 10 most critical training articles.
- What it tells you: High views on a "Pricing Guide" article tells you it's valuable. Low views on a "Competitor Overview" might mean it's hard to find or not perceived as useful. This helps you focus on creating and refining the content your team truly needs.
Report 3: The 'Time to Productivity' Report
This is the killer metric for proving ROI. It measures how quickly a new hire starts delivering tangible value.
- What it measures: The time between a new hire's start date and them achieving a key milestone (e.g., closing their first deal).
- How to build it: This requires a custom report. You'll need a custom property on the user record for their "Start Date." You can then build a sales report that calculates the average time between that start date and the "Close Date" of their first won deal.
- What it tells you: This is your headline figure. Being able to say, "Our new onboarding process has reduced 'time to first deal' by 25%," is an incredibly powerful statement for executives.
Report 4: The CRM Adoption & Activity Report
This report tracks whether the training is leading to better daily habits within the CRM.
- What it measures: Sales activities logged (calls, emails, meetings).
- How to build it: Create a sales activity report that shows the total number of activities logged, filtered by your new hires over their first 90 days.
- What it tells you: A steady increase in logged activities is a strong indicator that the new rep is adopting the right behaviours and using the CRM as intended.
From Data to Decisions
Your dashboard isn't just a reporting tool; it’s a decision-making engine. It allows you to move from passive hope to active coaching. With this data at your fingertips, you can:
- Intervene Early: Spot a rep with low task completion and offer targeted help.
- Optimise Your Content: See which resources are being ignored and either improve them or remove them.
- Prove Your Impact: Confidently walk into a management meeting with hard data that demonstrates the business value of your training programme.
Stop guessing and start measuring. A centralised dashboard in HubSpot is the key to unlocking a truly data-driven training culture.
Learn how this crucial step fits into the complete 90-day strategy for onboarding success.
