10 Questions to Ask in Employee Satisfaction Surveys

Offering your staff teams the opportunity to give honest feedback to their management through employee engagement surveys and employee experience surveys shows your staff that your organisation values their opinions to improve their experience and business operations.

Results from employee engagement surveys can often be surprising, but every piece of information about your employee’s experience in the workplace is useful to inform future strategies, policies and HR decisions.

However, ensuring your HR teams are asking the right employee engagement survey questions is pivotal to gain useful data and feedback. 

Survey results on productivity, morale and satisfaction in your workforce are an excellent way to improve your company, and to show what drives and motivates your teams.

Employee engagement is a vital component to having a company that flourishes long-term, as employee engagement will result in more motivated staff that are productive and passionate about your company’s mission.

Below are 10 example employee satisfaction questions for your staff engagement surveys… 

1) Is your workload manageable?

When an employee is unable to manage their workload, this can have a huge knock-on effect on the their wellbeing and their engagement. An excessive workload can result in feelings of stress, anxiety and other mental health issues.

An employee survey is an opportunity to measure your employees workloads, and to see if there’s any thing that can be done to lighten the workloads of those that are struggling to cope.

It is the duty of the employer to take appropriate measures to evenly distribute work amongst co-workers. Otherwise, this can lead to burnout and a steep drop in employee engagement.

Employees need to feel energised and motivated, and this is hard when they feel the work they are responsible for is unreasonable. Tasks will be rushed, and the quality of work will decrease. 

2) If you were to quit tomorrow, what would the reason(s) be?

This hypothetical question is an excellent way of finding where exactly your company is falling short. This survey question is an opportunity for the employee to raise any concerns that they may through the form of an anonymous employee engagement survey.

Some employees find confronting their manager’s about work-related issues uncomfortable, so this question provides a guilt free space without the fear of being reprimanded. 

With the addition of this question in your survey, employers can find out any issues that they may otherwise not be made aware of, allowing them to tackle these problems early on before they start affecting staff turnover rates.

This is an excellent way to find out exactly where there are cracks, giving managers the chance to develop company-wide strategies for a better overall employee experience.

3) On a scale of 1-10, how meaningful do you find your work?

In the modern world, more and more people are determined to find meaning in their work. Job satisfaction and employee engagement is at its highest when employees find what they do is meaningful, and important to them.

A study found that employees who find work highly meaningful are ‘69% less likely to plan on quitting their jobs within the next 6 months‘. This shows that companies are more likely to have high-levels of employee retention when they have staff members that care about your company’s mission, and believe in what they do.

Including this question on an employee engagement survey can provide a lot of insight into whether your employees feel engaged by their roles. Engagement stems from enthusiasm, and nothing can make an employee feel more enthusiastic and driven than finding meaning in what they do.

4) On a scale of 1-10 how happy are you at work, and why?

A happy team is a successful team. Happiness is a key part of employee engagement, and getting honest employee feedback on their morale can lead to a better employee experience across the company. 

Simply put, the happier an employee is the more engaged and driven they will be. This question lends itself to the previous one in that they are centered around the morale of the employee. However, their happiness is more of a general insight into the employees overall working experience. 

If employees are happy, they are more likely to want to stay at the company. This will lead to greater employee engagement from contributing ideas, confidence, promoting creativity, motivation and a high employee retention rate. 

Adding this question to your staff survey shows your staff that HR and senior management value their happiness and their wellbeing, and that there is active effort to better understand how to create a workplace that promotes happiness.

5) How supported do you feel by your managers?

Ensuring your staff feel supported by their managers is key to improving your working environment. Leadership teams are meant to support, inspire and motivate.

Supporting staff is not a one-size-fits-all, and different employees will need different methods of support to get the best out of them. 

It is important for staff to have a management team that cares about them, and is genuinely interested in the employees best interest and their performance. Regular appraisals and check-ins can help to make employees feel heard, more supported and increase engagement levels and satisfaction throughout the workforce . 

6) Do you feel there are enough development opportunities available to you? 

It is your responsibility as an employer to provide enough room for growth, and to nurture your employees. 

It can be very demoralising when staff feel there’s no room to take their career to the next level, which can lead to them looking elsewhere. However, knowing there is ample room for personal growth is a fantastic motivator.

This can lead to better employee engagement, and higher employee retention rates as they will want to commit to your company long-term. 

7) Do you like our company culture, and why?

A company can often be defined by their culture. Therefore, a company that understands the importance of creating a workplace culture that motivates and satisfies its employees will be a one that outgrows its competitors and sees success. 

Using employee engagement survey questions to determine how your employees feel about company culture can help to identify any gaps between your vision of company culture and what it’s currently like.

Including a question about company culture in an employee satisfaction survey is important to gain employee feedback so that appropriate strategies to bridge these gaps can be created, bettering staff experience and overall engagement.

8) How valued do you feel in this company?  

Feeling valued in the workplace is essential for employee satisfaction and engagement in the workplace. A study by the American Psychological Association found that ‘almost all employees (93 percent) who reported feeling valued said that they are motivated to do their best at work and 88 percent reported feeling engaged’.

And feeling valued isn’t just about the salary and benefits employees receive; it’s about the recognition they get and how supported they feel. When your staff are shown gratitude for their contributions, they are going to feel more motivated to go the extra mile for the business.

From helping out their team members as much as possible to ultimately, staying at the company and developing their skills. This means lowering employee turnover rates and improving employee engagement.

When colleagues and superiors alike recognise an employees contributions and efforts, it can be a fantastic motivator and boost their morale. Engagement stems from enthusiasm, and this is created when employees are valued and recognised for their hard work.  

9) Do we have a working environment that promotes a healthy work-life balance?

Without a healthy work-life balance, people cannot perform to the best of their ability. It is important to create a culture that helps employees strike an effective balance between their work and life commitments.  

Down time and relaxation is essential when it comes to productivity, as without it, burnout becomes the inevitable destination for your employees. 

The importance of a healthy work-life balance cannot be understated, and this is an essential question for any employee engagement survey.

By asking this question a couple times of year, you can consistently make active changes to the working environment to help create and maintain a better balance for your staff members.

10) Do you enjoy employee engagement surveys?

The answer should, of course, be yes…

But in all honesty, this can be a good, open-ended survey question to see if you’re asking the right questions. There may be other things that staff throughout your organisation may want to raise, and this gives them an opportunity to do so.

Employee engagement survey questions are a great way to discover employee satisfaction, and by asking the right questions in your employee survey, it can you help to identify of strength and weakness of your work environment.

HR reporting and analytics solutions can offer HR teams the opportunity to gain accurate insight the various different parts of the organisation, and data that is gained from these solutions can be used to both inform survey questions to help learn more or to help better find a solution as a result of certain trends that the data is showing.

Satisfied employees are essential to success, and can provide insight on how to change these weaknesses to strengths through their own experience.