Hishem AzzouzHost Of Recruitment Mentors Podcast

The metric you must be measuring above all others.

Name: The metric you must be measuring above all others.
Uploaded: 2025-08-27T16:01:26+00:00
Duration: 41 s
Channel: Hishem Azzouz
Description: In this brief YouTube excerpt, two speakers discuss why headcount alone is a misleading indicator of company success and propose a more meaningful…

27 Aug 2025 · 1 min

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In this brief YouTube excerpt, two speakers discuss why headcount alone is a misleading indicator of company success and propose a more meaningful metric: productivity per head, calculated as total billings divided by the number of all staff members. They explain that for businesses heavily reinvesting (around £100k‑£120k annually), a productivity per head of £100k‑£150k is acceptable, while less‑reinvesting firms should aim higher. The speakers share their own experience of raising this figure from roughly £120k to over £200k after an exit by stopping new hires and concentrating on profit and productivity, illustrating how strategic hiring decisions directly affect this metric.

Chapters

I think people would say, I've grown my company to X number of heads. I think we all know that that's not an important metric.
The way that we would assess a business very quickly is the productivity per head. Take the total number of billings, divide that across every member of staff. Yes, every member. Don't like just only my salespeople, every member of staff. And they'll give you a number and I'll say for a business that's heavily reinvesting £100,000 to £120,000 a year, that's okay. Probably you'll probably make a bit of profit off of that and you're heavily reinvesting. If you're not, maybe you'll get closer to £150,000. We took that number from £120,000 to over £200,000. Yeah, you know, after, after the exit, because we stopped hiring, we focused purely on driving profit, productivity.