Employee survey questions: understanding what your teams need to thrive

While it’s not always easy to hear, feedback from employees is essential to the health of your organization — perhaps now more than ever. 80% of professionals aged 35 to 44 report anxiety about their economic situations (1) and 41% of HR leaders say that hybrid and remote work has compromised their team members’ connection to their culture (2). That means companies need to rethink how they gather team member input and use employee survey questions to serve their people’s needs. 

Unfortunately, employee surveys are underutilized across the board: A recent Leapsome study found that only one in three HR leaders track critical metrics like engagement and turnover, and only a third of that group use dedicated surveys to do so (3). 

That’s likely because staff questionnaires can seem like intimidating combinations of creativity, analytics, and timing. Many HR leaders and managers aren’t quite sure how to create effective questions, how to interpret the data, and how to act on the feedback.

We don’t think employee surveys should feel like impossible puzzles to solve, which is why in this article, we break down:

• Why your company needs employee surveys
• How to build an effective questionnaire and ask the right employee survey questions
• 35 concrete examples of survey questions for employees you can use and edit for your own employee questionnaires
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🦾 Employee surveys are a powerful tool for navigating changing workplaces

Leapsome Surveys leverages AI to analyze survey results, making it even easier to put employee feedback to good use.

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1. Bank of America Workplace Benefits Report, 2023
2. Gartner, 2023
3. Leapsome Workforce Trends Report, 2023
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Benefits of running an employee feedback survey

Employee feedback questionnaires not only help managers and HR teams listen to their people and improve the workplace experience — they also allow employees to feel engaged in the mission of the organization. That’s critical at a time when more remote and hybrid workers, in particular, feel like they’re drifting away from their company’s purpose.

A feedback survey for employees can make a real impact on your business, helping you to:

• Reduce turnover — Deploying employee feedback surveys helps you get to the bottom of what’s impacting metrics like engagement, satisfaction, and workplace experience so you can improve them and retain your people.
   
• Track trends over time for different groups — Using a platform like Leapsome Surveys to run your questionnaires allows you to segment employee demographics and departments so you can track engagement patterns over time and share them easily in a PowerPoint format. For instance, your HR feedback survey questions might reveal that your human resources team has been feeling more satisfied with work and less stressed than survey respondents from your product department.
  
  
• Take more decisive action — Actually implementing ideas and suggestions from your employee feedback survey is key to combating survey fatigue. Paired with this is the fact that more granular and accurate data better equips you to solve your most pressing engagement issues. To streamline the analytics and action plans, Leapsome Surveys uses AI to summarize employee sentiment and suggest next steps based on your staff feedback survey results.

How to build an effective company survey for employees

When leaders and managers treat surveys as a mere checkbox exercise, employees can tell. According to Leapsome’s People Enablement Report, 38% of team members reported that they’d consider leaving their job because of a workplace culture that’s not invested in feedback.

To avoid that disconnect and build surveys that yield actionable insights, you should:

• Use a combination of open and closed-ended questions — Closed-ended questions provide quantifiable data for statistical analysis, while open-ended questions allow employees to express nuanced opinions and provide context for their answers.
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• Align company survey frequency with the pace of your goals and potential changes — For example, frequent pulse surveys allow organizations to respond to specific issues right away, while annual surveys can provide a more comprehensive overview of employee engagement and aid with your strategic planning.
  
  
• Consider how long you want employees to spend on your surveys — The ideal staff survey shouldn’t take more than half an hour to complete. You could draft your survey and ask members of your HR team or leadership to test the length before asking people to participate.
  
  
• Remember that not every survey question should yield the same score — Workplace listening consultant Paul Mastrangelo says that “certain topics are easier for employees to be positive about, and others are not. I call this the ‘degree of difficulty’ for the survey questions. What appears to be a high score may actually be a topic where all companies see high scores, and yours is not as high as the others. Likewise, what appears to be a low score may actually be a topic where all companies struggle, and you may be doing better than most.” 

35 sample survey questions for employees

Your closed-ended survey questions should be direct and easy to understand so that employees can quickly rate them on a 5-point Likert scale or whatever scale system works best for you. With open-ended questions, encourage honest and detailed feedback, asking for specific examples or suggestions for improvement.

Below, you’ll find examples of both closed- and open-ended questions you can adjust to align with your company’s unique messaging and needs.
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6 examples for questionnaires on employee engagement

Engagement survey questions can cover topics like workload, company culture, manager support, and wellness, but their overall purpose is to help leadership gauge team members’ engagement — specifically, their mental and emotional commitment to their role and feelings about their work. Here are a few sample questions to measure employee engagement.

Closed-ended:

• I would recommend [company] as a great place to work
• [Company] effectively communicates the goals and strategy set by leadership.
• I’m inspired by the mission and purpose of [company].
• I feel that my work is valued and appreciated by management and leadership.

Open-ended: 

• What are your suggestions about what [company] could do to make team members feel more connected to the mission and strategy of the company?
• What can we do to make this a more psychologically safe workplace?

🤔 Skip the guesswork with proven, best-practice-driven survey questions

Our free engagement survey template includes 70 questions that get to the heart of what employees are really thinking and feeling about work.

👉 Download our free template

6 employee engagement questions for managers

Managers have a major impact on their direct reports’ work experience, accounting for a full 70% of the variation in their engagement levels. The thing is, team leads are also feeling burned out and underqualified in this new world of work — 70% of them report they have no training to manage their remote and hybrid teams. These anonymous manager survey questions should give you more clarity about how your team leads are feeling about their roles.

Closed-ended:

• I feel my workload aligns with my capacity to manage it effectively.
• I’m satisfied with my current role and responsibilities as a manager.
• I feel connected to the company’s mission and purpose.
• I feel that I had adequate training and support when moving to a managerial role.

Open-ended: 

• Can you provide specific examples of tasks, responsibilities, or scenarios that you find particularly fulfilling or challenging in your managerial role?
• Can you share examples of effective communication practices or areas where improvement is needed within the managerial team?

6 employee satisfaction survey questions

Employee satisfaction is both about how people feel at work overall and how happy they are with how they are rewarded and recognized by their company, through compensation and perks like flexible work hours, child care, and unique benefits. It’s important to remember that employee satisfaction is a lagging indicator — it may take one or two survey cycles for changes or actions based on survey results to show an impact on scores. 

Here are a few employee satisfaction questions to get you started.

Closed-ended:

• I feel my compensation and benefits package is competitive.
• I feel I’m growing professionally in my role.
• I find the mentorship I’m getting from managers and other leaders useful.
• I feel my professional path with [company] is clear.

Open-ended: 

• What specific training or development opportunities would you like us to offer?
• What other specific benefits and incentives do you need or feel you’d enjoy?
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6 survey questions about employee experience

Employee experience is the overall perception people have about their company and their workplace throughout their tenure, and it impacts metrics like employee satisfaction, engagement, retention, performance, and recruitment. Even as some companies are beginning to deprioritize employee experience (EX) to focus on financial initiatives, EX is still an essential consideration for companies that want to attract the best talent.

That’s why you should keep putting your people first with these employee experience survey questions.

Closed-ended: 

• I feel my onboarding experience prepared me well for my role.
• I’ve been satisfied with my career growth during my time at [company].  
• I believe [company] effectively recognizes and appreciates diversity in the workplace.
• I very rarely feel pressured to work outside of my regular working hours.

Open-ended:

• Reflecting on your onboarding experience, what aspects were particularly helpful, and what suggestions do you have for improving the onboarding process?
• Can you share an experience where you felt the performance feedback you received was constructive and helped you grow in your role?
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6 stay survey questions

Stay interviews are proactive tools that help you understand how your top performers feel about their professional situation, why they’ve chosen to stay with your company, and how you can retain them long-term. 

They allow leverage of much of the same data that exit surveys can provide, but they can lead to more engaged employees and reduce turnover before it happens. 

You can run a dedicated stay survey or stay interview, or incorporate some stay survey questions into your engagement surveys. Use these examples to inspire you. 

Closed-ended: 

• I’m considering leaving the company in the next six months.
• I’m satisfied with the career growth opportunities at [company].
• I feel my immediate supervisor offers plenty of support and guidance with my day-to-day tasks.
• I’m satisfied with the overall company culture and team dynamics.

Open-ended: 

• Can you provide more context about specific aspects of your role that contribute to your satisfaction or dissatisfaction?
• If you are considering leaving, what factors are influencing your decision?
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6 team engagement questions

Remote and hybrid work have changed our concept of what a team looks like, but that doesn’t mean your organization shouldn’t strive for better team cohesion and collaboration. In fact, investing in team engagement can do wonders to set your company apart: Only 8.7% of 1,000 respondents to a recent ignite80 workplace survey acknowledged they were part of a high-performing team.

The following team engagement questions are designed to discover how employees feel about their experience as part of a unit. 

Open-ended: 

• My team often discusses how we will collaborate at the start of any given task or project.
• I feel confident in my ability to collaborate with my team.
• Our team leader has done a great job ensuring that we all know each others’ communication preferences and styles.
• I feel my team values my contributions to various projects.

Closed-ended: 

• Can you provide at least one concrete example of a time when your team had to handle an internal disagreement? How did you resolve the situation(s)? 
• Share an example of a recent team achievement or milestone that had a positive impact on employee morale. 
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Create a culture of feedback & collaboration with Leapsome

Employee surveys require some investment of time, resources, and talent, but they’re well worth it. If you learn how to put your team’s input to good use, it can set you apart from many other companies. That matters in the face of an uncertain economy and labor market.

Now imagine you can cut down on the work involved with a powerful survey platform at your disposal — one that allows you to automate your survey cycles and leverage results the right way.

That’s Leapsome, a holistic people enablement solution that also utilizes AI to make gathering feedback more efficient. With our Surveys module, you can easily build out surveys using our expert-backed, customizable templates — and streamline the survey distribution process with automated survey cycles and reminders. Then, you can use AI to quickly analyze and summarize survey feedback and generate action plan recommendations. You can also compare engagement trends across different demographics, teams, and time periods. What’s more, visualizations and graphics make it easier to understand and digest data so you’re never overwhelmed by survey results.

Using Leapsome to run your surveys means your organization can efficiently process feedback, generate actionable insights, and navigate through an increasingly complex business landscape to a brighter future. 
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🧑‍🔬 You don’t have to be a data scientist to make the most of your survey results

Leapsome Surveys harnesses the power of AI to segment results from key teams and trends and summarize the most important insights.

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