Writing effective employee survey questions is a skill that can transform your organisation’s ability to listen, understand and act on employee feedback. The right questions can reveal what motivates employees, highlight barriers to engagement and pinpoint areas for improvement. However, poorly designed questions can lead to unclear data, disengagement or even survey fatigue.
While structured frameworks like People Insight’s Pearl™, Belong™ and Thrive™ models provide a solid foundation, there may be times when you need to tailor questions to your organisation’s unique challenges. This comprehensive guide will help you craft well-structured employee survey questions that provide meaningful, actionable insights.
Related: How to interpret your employee survey results
Most employee surveys contain around 35 questions and should take approximately 10-15 minutes to complete. Pulse surveys — shorter surveys designed to provide quick insights — typically contain between 10 and 20 questions.
Striking the right balance in survey length is important. If a survey is too short, the data collected may not provide enough insight to drive action. Conversely, overly long surveys can lead to disengagement, with employees losing interest or providing rushed responses. The key is to ask targeted, meaningful questions that cover key areas of employee experience without overwhelming respondents.
Leading organisations are adopting a more agile approach to employee listening by running pulse surveys throughout the year. These surveys help to:
While annual surveys provide a comprehensive snapshot, pulse surveys offer timely insights that allow organisations to respond quickly to emerging challenges. The choice depends on your organisation’s goals, but in many cases, a combination of both can be highly effective.
To get the best results from your employee survey, follow these principles:
Survey questions should take the form of statements that employees can agree or disagree with. This approach makes it easier to measure sentiment consistently.
Long or overly complicated statements can confuse respondents and reduce engagement.
Avoid leading or loaded statements that might influence responses.
Questions that combine multiple topics can lead to unclear responses.
A well-designed employee survey will include a mix of question types to ensure comprehensive insights.
These are the most common type of employee survey question. They ask employees to indicate their level of agreement with a statement on a scale (e.g., from 1 = Strongly Disagree to 5 = Strongly Agree). Likert scale questions are useful for tracking trends over time and benchmarking against industry data.
These invite employees to share qualitative feedback in their own words. Open-ended questions provide valuable context and can highlight issues that may not emerge from structured responses alone. When asking these types of questions, AI tools such as our own Prism can collect and analyse responses instantly, giving you a goldmine of insights and information.
These allow employees to select from predefined options. They are particularly useful for demographic questions or when asking about preferences.
The employee survey questions below are Likert questions, which means they take the form of statements that employees are asked to rate between 1 and 5, with 1 being “Strongly Agree” and 5 being “Strongly Disagree”. They cover key areas such as engagement, leadership, wellbeing and company culture.
Asking about belief in action is a highly important question to ask in your staff survey because it is a real indicator of your company culture. There is no point in conducting an employee survey if nobody thinks any good will come from the exercise. The first time you survey, employees may be sceptical or positive. You are setting a baseline expectation. It is essential that you follow this up with action, in order to establish their trust in the survey process. When you begin to see positive ratings for this question, you will know your employees have faith in your company’s ability to take on board feedback and act on it. This score can become a key parameter across the organisation and should encourage employees to approach managers on other occasions, trusting they are open to feedback.
Related: How to build buy-in and belief with employee surveys
We know that senior leaders and managers have a significant impact on employee engagement levels. This question needs to be asked because it reflects whether employees feel respected and valued by leadership. Low scores for this question indicate employees feel superfluous or disengaged. A solution may be for leaders and managers to ask for feedback in town hall meetings or 1:1s and, where possible, to act on this feedback. In many ways this survey question ties in nicely with our belief in action question above since there must be a company culture of listening and action led from the top.
Asking this question in your employee survey is a great way to start improving employee retention rates. Engaged employees are loyal employees, but if employees aren’t getting what they need out of their role and out of the company, they will (understandably) look for opportunities elsewhere. If you notice negative trends around employee retention, look at scores for this question in the context of your employee survey results. Your results dashboard will highlight the lowest scoring factors which may be driving employees to leave. Once you have a more solid understanding of the causes, you can take action to improve these areas and encourage employees to stay.
Feeling undervalued is a frequent key driver of disengagement. However when hard work is acknowledged by management, the result is happier and more productive staff. Recognition doesn’t have to come at a high price, and even small companies can effectively reward their employees. For inspiration about employee rewards and recognition, check out our ideas to celebrate Employee Appreciation Day or try these effective non-financial employee rewards.
Poor scores for this survey question can indicate an issue in your company culture around collaboration and teamwork. A supportive and friendly company culture is vital for business success. So low scores for this question, as well as clues in open-text comments, may indicate issues of trust between teams, perceptions of different treatment of one team versus another, competing priorities, or simply a lack of communication. Before taking action, you may need additional feedback from employees to understand this issue. This can be via focus groups or a follow-up pulse survey.
This question speaks to employee perceptions of quality of services and organisational values. It’s been proven that modern employees want to be given purpose and meaning in their careers. This is easier to accomplish when people are aware of, and support, company values and ethics. This question also ties into the employee’s pride about the service and/or products the company provides and their perception of the company culture, as well as whether the company’s brand aligns with their own personal brand. This is important for long-term retention and happiness.
This employee survey question is again crucial in terms of purpose, which is a key driver of employee engagement. Employees must understand company goals, direction and values so they are armed with all the information they need to perform their job well. The more informed an employee is, the better equipped they are to make decisions that support company values and objectives. A low score for this survey question could be a major red flag about your company culture.
One of the most important drivers of employee engagement is ongoing training and development opportunities for employees. Not only should employees be given the right training and tools to perform their current job effectively, but they should also be offered growth opportunities and development opportunities to allow them to reach their full potential. Personal growth can also be a useful retention tool. It’s been shown that Millennials are more likely to stay in a job that offers opportunities for development.
This question is highly relevant in terms of employee wellbeing, job satisfaction and work-life balance. Unfortunately, highly engaged employees may score negatively here, pushing themselves to achieve more and more when inspired. When overworked, employees experience a considerable amount of stress, and their personal life suffers as a result. At People Insight, we have created a guide to help managers spot signs of stress and burnout, and make changes to reduce this.
Workplace autonomy shouldn’t really be considered an employee perk. Rather, it is a necessity for employees to feel engaged and passionate about what they do and empowered to get on with their work. Therefore this survey question can reveal a lot about trust and micromanagement within your company culture. There is nothing that kills motivation more than a lingering manager who is constantly there to breathe down your neck and question your every move. If you recruited wisely, you hired ambitious, intelligent adults. They deserve to be treated as such, or they will likely leave for a more progressive organisation.
Creating well-crafted employee survey questions demonstrates a commitment to listening and improving the employee experience. Employee listening isn’t just about gathering feedback; it’s about acting on it. When the employee feedback loop is closed and employees see that their input leads to tangible changes, they are more likely to participate in future surveys and share honest insights.
If you want to take the guesswork out of employee survey design and gain reliable insights that drive real change, People Insight can help. Get in touch today to explore how a tailored employee survey can support your organisation’s goals.
