Employee surveys: Types, sample questions and how to run them

Stop guessing and start leading. Employee surveys give you the data you need to measure job satisfaction, boost employee engagement and strategically improve benefits or performance reviews. By gauging employee opinions directly, your business can take active steps to improve the workplace experience.

This guide explains the various types of surveys, offers practical sample questions and shares proven best practices to help your HR team succeed.

Employee surveys are questionnaires used by managers and HR teams to collect feedback on workplace topics such as satisfaction, engagement and company culture. 

Employee surveys can be used in many ways to help organisations improve the employee experience, create healthier work environments, support a better work-life balance and focus on inclusion and belonging. 

Listening to your employees helps you make better decisions, improve organisational health and create a happier workplace. Each type of employee survey gathers data for specific purposes.

Read on for 11 types of employee surveys used by business owners, HR teams, managers, and training and development professionals:

Evaluate employees using feedback from supervisors, colleagues and subordinates. This approach focuses on assessing employees from several viewpoints.

Career training and development surveys evaluate what continuing education courses matter most to employees. Assess how employees perceive your workplace training and development opportunities, and evaluate their effectiveness. 

Creating a workplace culture that puts belonging and inclusion at its heart is the best way to attract diverse, talented people, build a sustainable workforce and, most importantly, ensure employees feel supported.

Strong employee benefits are essential for attracting and keeping top talent. Use this employee benefits survey to see whether your staff feel fairly compensated. Collect data to enhance your benefits offering and support employee wellbeing.   

How do employees rate their own performance and job satisfaction? Ask team members to carry out self-evaluations to measure their progress. This helps managers spot areas needing improvement and highlights where further support may be needed.

Job satisfaction is vital for retaining your best people. A job satisfaction survey assesses how fulfilled employees feel in their roles and helps keep team morale high.

A comfortable work environment and clear company direction are essential for a happy, productive workforce. Measure employee satisfaction to improve retention and company culture.  

Related reading: Employee satisfaction: Why it matters and how to improve it

Pulse surveys are a practical way to monitor employee sentiment over time and evaluate the effects of company changes. By sending pulse surveys regularly, you can collect valuable feedback and spot potential issues early. 

Find out how employees feel about their managers by sending out a survey. This helps ensure supervisors and managers clearly communicate expectations, goals and company vision to their teams. 

Exit surveys give departing employees the chance to offer valuable feedback that can improve onboarding and overall employee satisfaction in the future. Discover the reasons people leave and learn how to retain your current team.

Curious about employees’ opinions on company events and what they’d like in future? Send an event survey to make your next gathering even better. 

Additional employee survey template pages to explore:

Programmes connect multiple surveys to show you trends. Available on Advantage plans and higher.

Here are a few example questions to help you get started. Explore our survey template library with over 400 expert-designed surveys.  

Related reading: How to build a winning employee engagement programme

To maximise the impact of your surveys, you need the right strategy. Deploy these employee survey tips to gather the most accurate data, empowering you to make confident, data-backed business decisions.

Your overarching goal will dictate the survey's scope, the types of questions asked, and ultimately, how the results are interpreted and used. Without a well-defined objective, the survey risks becoming a collection of disjointed questions that yield ambiguous or unactionable data.

Benchmarking enables you to strategically compare internal teams and spot trends in employee wellbeing. Consistency is key to reliable results: use the same questions each time with every group to build accurate benchmarks and monitor the effect of your support initiatives.

For global organisations, surveys should be multilingual. Sending surveys in multiple languages ensures clarity and leads to more accurate responses from your entire workforce.

Respect employees’ time by keeping surveys brief and limiting questions to only what’s necessary. This is also a best practice for maximising completion rates.

Save time by making use of SurveyMonkey’s 400+ free survey templates. They give you a strong starting point and are simple to customise for your needs. SurveyMonkey also gives you access to the tools you need to deploy and analyse your HR survey easily, empowering you to make smarter decisions.

Remember, you’re not just asking one-time customers about their experience. You’re surveying colleagues you work with every day. Giving critical feedback may be uncomfortable, but it’s necessary. You can gather honest, actionable feedback by making your survey anonymous. Anonymous employee surveys are the gold standard for workplace feedback.

Send your survey when you know employees are at work, typically 9–5 on weekdays, or, for night shift staff, perhaps 7 pm on a Saturday. Distributing your survey when employees are most engaged increases the likelihood of participation.

Close the feedback loop by sharing key findings with your team. This openness builds trust and shows that leadership truly values employee input.

You’re not finished after the first survey. Once you’ve acted on earlier feedback, it’s important to check in with employees again to assess whether your changes have been effective. Even better, run employee surveys regularly to track sentiment over time. This could mean monthly employee pulse surveys, quarterly performance reviews or annual employee Net Promoter Score® (eNPS®) surveys.

Employee surveys help business leaders and HR teams track engagement, satisfaction and other important metrics. By using the tips and best practices above, you can start collecting valuable data from your employees.
SurveyMonkey is here to support you in creating and distributing employee surveys. Our platform makes it easy to get started today.