The 20 best employee satisfaction survey questions

Having satisfied and happy employees may not seem particularly important in terms of its contribution to the health and profitability of your business. Many employers think that engaging their employees is a nice add-on and put little effort into prioritising employees’ satisfaction with the company.

However, if you treat the satisfaction of your employees as an optional endeavour, this will have a severe impact on your business. After all, your employees are on the front lines, performing your business’s essential functions. Therefore, building a robust employee experience that keeps your workforce happy is critical to your bottom line.

But how do you know for sure how your employees feel about their roles and your workplace culture? Are they happy, ‘quietly quitting’ or planning their exit?

You need to know where you currently stand to make effective improvements; that’s why you need to ask the best employee satisfaction survey questions.

Employee satisfaction is a broad topic and can be difficult to define. However, at its core, employee satisfaction means how content employees are with their role, employee experience and workplace as well as the company culture.

Employee satisfaction is a crucial aspect of your company’s overall employee experience. It’s not the same as employee engagement, although the two concepts are related. Engagement relates to performance, whereas satisfaction will have a significant impact on your retention rates.

A high employee satisfaction rate tells you that employees are happy with how they are treated at work. Employee satisfaction comes from two main factors: material ones, such as remuneration or benefits, and considerations, such as recognition and leadership. To create a happy and engaged workforce, it is essential to address both aspects.

Employee satisfaction greatly influences the profitability of your business. From top executives to entry-level staff, happy employees increase productivity and reduce turnover. Satisfied employees also become loyal advocates and are more inclined to excel due to the support that they receive.

What factors influence how satisfied (or dissatisfied) employees are? There are many, and they work together to create your employee experience.

It’s natural to want to be recognised and appreciated for what we accomplish. Employees who feel valued at work are more satisfied. Conversely, employees who feel undervalued and unappreciated typically have lower satisfaction rates.

Even employees who love their jobs need time away from work to live a well-rounded life. Feeling overworked and stressed is not suitable for employee satisfaction, so it’s vital to help employees achieve a better balance between their working and personal lives.

Uncertainty about job security makes it challenging to experience workplace satisfaction. Although the future can’t be guaranteed, instability within the organisation or team may decrease employee satisfaction.

Employees want to feel there are opportunities to grow in their roles, especially if they like the company culture. If they can see a future with your company, it’s more likely that they will be satisfied with where they are now.

However much employees may love their role and your company, they come to work for one main reason: to get paid. So if they are remunerated fairly for their work, years of experience and industry, they will feel more satisfied.

If employees don’t feel they can trust or know what’s going on in your company, that leads to higher levels of dissatisfaction. Leadership should clearly communicate essential company decisions and policies to help ensure that employees feel able to trust the company and its leaders.

Employees want to work where they can be authentic and feel welcomed. A diverse workplace fosters an environment of inclusion and leads to more satisfied and engaged employees.

It’s no surprise that employees prefer to be treated like the competent adult professionals that they are. Letting them be free to do their jobs without excessive micromanaging or inflexible and arbitrary rules increases satisfaction and significantly influences employee engagement.

Employee satisfaction surveys are the most effective way to measure your employees’ satisfaction with your company and determine which factors impact their satisfaction levels.

You should send out regular employee satisfaction surveys to find out whether your employees are happy and engaged at work. Make sure you anonymise surveys about employee satisfaction so that workers feel comfortable sharing their honest opinions.

Employees who are unhappy with the workplace culture, leadership or aspects of their role tend to be unproductive. Employee satisfaction surveys can help determine what makes employees unhappy, so you can pinpoint the most effective improvements to increase productivity.

Satisfaction is a significant element in employee retention rates; it’s hard to hold onto your best employees if they’re unsatisfied. And having a high rate of turnover is expensive because you need to continually hire and train new people. Employee satisfaction surveys can help you find the causes of turnover and increase happiness so that employees stay with your organisation longer.

It can be hard to identify which training programmes benefit the company and employees most. Furthermore, a lack of training and development opportunities may cause employee dissatisfaction. A survey can help you identify gaps and training needs.

Although you may assume you know how satisfied your employees are, it’s hard to gauge their feelings without soliciting their feedback. However, ensure that they can offer feedback anonymously so they don’t fear retribution for their honesty.

Engaged employees offer better customer service and are more productive at work. Yet you won’t know how to improve engagement levels unless you ask employees about their engagement levels and what would work to increase them in a satisfaction survey.

You understand by now that employee satisfaction surveys are vitally important for the success of your business. How about creating the most effective one for your organisation?

It all begins with asking the right questions. These effective employee satisfaction survey examples will deliver valuable data and actionable insights to create a highly satisfied workforce.

Organisation-related questions offer insights into how employees feel about your organisation as a whole. Company satisfaction surveys will allow you to surface any organisation-wide problems that decrease satisfaction.

Employees are more engaged if they feel their work relates to the organisation’s goals and mission. This question will offer insights into how clear your company’s goals are to employees at every level.

Employees who don’t feel that there is room for career growth are more likely to be dissatisfied. This question will let you know how they feel about their current growth opportunities to find solutions if you discover that employees are unhappy.

When employees are dissatisfied at work, they probably have one foot out of the door already. By asking them this question, you will gain insight into potential retention issues and future turnover.

Do you want to know how satisfied employees are in their roles? If so, ask them directly! This question will give you insight into your employees’ overall satisfaction level with their jobs and help you determine whether satisfaction issues arise from role-related problems or lie elsewhere, such as management or the organisational culture.

The people who you work with closely every day significantly affect satisfaction levels at work. That’s why it’s essential to ask these team-related questions to determine whether there any factors within a specific team that are dragging down or increasing satisfaction levels.

If some of your employees genuinely want to do their best but are surrounded by team members who make that difficult and are unsupportive, that’s not a recipe for high satisfaction rates. Insights from this question may uncover team problems that a manager can address.

Employees spend a lot of time with their fellow team members, so these people have a significant impact on an employee’s satisfaction and inspiration. Being surrounded by engaged, enthusiastic people makes work feel more inspiring and engaging.

Employees are happier when they know their voice matters. This question offers insights into how team dynamics may affect satisfaction.

You’re probably familiar with the maxim that people don’t leave bad jobs; they leave bad managers. While that’s not true 100% of the time, supervisors play a crucial role in an employee’s satisfaction level because the former have a significant impact on the latter’s day-to-day experience. Supervisor performance surveys help you gather information about the areas where company leadership succeeds and those where it falls short.

A supportive manager can make a big difference in an employee’s career trajectory. This question provides data about how well your managers accomplish this vital task.

This question will help you determine how well your managers recognise and reward hard work and good results.

Managers who don’t encourage open conversations with their reports or who seem to value some employees’ opinions over others can be a major source of dissatisfaction. This can discourage employees from speaking up about important issues and offering valuable ideas.

Employees who are passionate about their jobs tend to work harder and produce more; they can be your business’s growth engine. Asking about their roles, benefits and pay can unearth interesting insights into satisfaction.

Feeling satisfied at work is hard when employees don’t feel they can use their strongest skills. If employees indicate dissatisfaction, you can encourage them to collaborate with other colleagues and pursue their pet projects to increase their satisfaction.

Employees want to feel that their work has a meaningful impact on the company; otherwise, their tasks can start to feel like hard work. Hiring people who find meaning in their work and your organisation can increase engagement and decrease turnover.

While meaning and appreciation are essential to employee satisfaction, so, too, is the pay provided. Asking employees whether they feel fairly paid can unearth a significant cause of low satisfaction rates and turnover.

This question is a great way to unearth why employees consider leaving. By identifying these issues, you can implement strategies to reduce turnover while increasing satisfaction.

If it’s likely that employees will recommend your company as a place to work, that’s a good sign. It means you can save on hiring costs by encouraging referrals. It also means they’re probably fairly satisfied with the employee experience.

Even if employees are passionate and well paid, they still want a life outside of work. Measuring how well you help them balance their duties with their personal lives can indicate areas for improving this crucial aspect of employee satisfaction.

Asking employees how they feel about their work-life balance can yield important insights into long-term employee satisfaction.

It’s normal for employees to feel stressed about work from time to time. But if they’re in a regular state of high stress, that’s bad for their health and satisfaction levels. This question can indicate whether your employees are at an increased risk of burning out.

Employees are reliant on managers and leaders to encourage and model a healthy work-life balance. This question can reveal how employees think their leaders value this critical aspect of the employee experience.

Creating a great workplace is about more than simply offering good pay and benefits. Building a diverse and inclusive workplace and culture is vital so that all employees feel welcomed, appreciated and valued.

This question will help you identify potential gaps in your organisation where you might be hindering attempts at increasing diversity, be that in your hiring process, promotions or any other areas.

Sensing unfairness, favouritism or outright discrimination in the workplace can decrease employee satisfaction and encourage employees to look for a job elsewhere. Asking employees this question can unearth results that might be painful at first, but it can help you create a fairer and happier work environment.

Related reading: 45 self-evaluation questions that managers can use for employee performance reviews

Creating the best employee satisfaction survey starts with asking the right questions. You should include a mix of the different questions to get a complete picture of employee satisfaction at your organisation.

However, it doesn’t stop there. Developing an action plan based on the results is crucial so employees know you’ve heard their feedback and are working hard to improve things.

Whether you’re looking to recruit top talent, create better onboarding experiences or build a talented workforce, SurveyMonkey can help.