The 20 best employee satisfaction survey questions

Having satisfied and happy employees can seem like it’s not particularly important to the health and profitability of your business. Many employers think engaging employees is a nice add-on and put little effort into prioritizing company satisfaction.

However, treating the satisfaction of your employees as an optional endeavor severely impacts 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 searching for an exit?

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

Employee satisfaction is a broad topic and can be tricky to define. But at its core, employee satisfaction is how content employees are with their roles, employee experience, the workplace, and company culture.

Employee satisfaction is a crucial part of your company’s overall employee experience. It’s not the same as employee engagement, though the two concepts are related. Engagement relates to performance, while satisfaction significantly impacts your retention rates.

A high employee satisfaction rate tells you that employees are happy with their treatment at work. Employee satisfaction comes from two main factors: material ones like compensation or benefits and considerations like recognition and leadership. Addressing both aspects is critical to creating a delighted and engaged workforce.

Employee satisfaction greatly influences your business's profitability. 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 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 recognized 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 more balance between their work and personal lives.

Uncertainty about job security makes it challenging to experience workplace satisfaction. Though the future can’t be guaranteed, instability within the organization or team can 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, they’re more likely to be satisfied with where they are now.

No matter how much employees love their role and your company, they come to work for one main reason: to get paid. And being compensated fairly for their work, years of experience, and industry ensures they 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 and ensure employees 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 if your employees are happy and engaged at work. Be sure to anonymize surveys on employee satisfaction so workers feel comfortable sharing truthfully.

Employees 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 as you continually need to hire and train new people. Employee satisfaction surveys can help you find the causes of turnover and increase happiness so employees stay with your organization longer.

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

You may assume you know how satisfied your employees are, but it’s hard to gauge their feelings without soliciting their feedback. However, ensure 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. But 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 to the success of your business. How about creating the most effective one for your organization?

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

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

Employees are more engaged if they feel their work connects to the organization’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 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 employees are unhappy.

When employees are dissatisfied at work, they probably have one foot out the door already. Asking them this question offers insight into potential retention issues and future turnover.

Want to know how satisfied employees are in their roles? Ask them directly! This question will give you insight into your employees’ overall satisfaction level with their jobs and help you determine if satisfaction issues arise from role-related problems or lie elsewhere, like management or the organizational culture.

The people you work with closely every day significantly affect satisfaction levels at work. That’s why it’s essential to ask these team-related questions, so you know if issues with a specific team 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 can uncover team problems a manager can address.

Employees spend a lot of time with their fellow team members, so they greatly impact 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’ve likely heard the saying that people don’t leave bad jobs; they leave bad managers. While that’s not true 100% of the time, supervisors are critical to an employee’s satisfaction because they greatly impact their day-to-day experience. Supervisor performance surveys help gather the areas in which company leadership succeeds and where they fall short.

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

This question will help you determine how well your managers recognize 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. And it can discourage employees from speaking up about important issues and offering valuable ideas.

Employees 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 their work has a meaningful impact on the company. Otherwise, their tasks can begin to feel like busy work. Hiring people who find meaning in their work and your organization can increase engagement and decrease turnover.

While meaning and appreciation are essential to employee satisfaction, so is the pay provided. Asking employees if 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 think about leaving. By identifying these issues, you can implement strategies to reduce turnover while increasing satisfaction.

It’s a good sign if employees are likely to recommend your company as a place to work. It means you can save on hiring costs by encouraging referrals. And it also means they’re likely pretty 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 critical part 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 occasionally. But if they’re in a regular state of high stress, that’s bad for their health and satisfaction levels. This question can indicate if your employees are at increased risk of burning out.

Employees are reliant on managers and leaders to encourage and model a healthy work-life balance. This question can uncover 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 all employees feel welcomed, appreciated, and valued.

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

Sensing unfairness, favoritism, 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: 20 self evaluation questions that managers can use for employee performance reviews

Creating the best employee satisfaction survey begins by asking the right questions. You should include a mix of the different questions to get a complete picture of employee satisfaction at your organization.

But it doesn’t stop there. Developing an action plan based on the results is critical 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.