Good questions decide whether an employee survey leads to decisions or just to another report. This guide gives you concrete example questions by topic, a template structure for your questionnaire, and shows where you need reasons instead of ratings.
Before you write questions
First clarify which decision the survey should prepare. "How satisfied are our employees?" is not a decision. "Why do experienced specialists leave in their second year, and what do we change first?" is one. Derive the topics from the management question, and the questions from the topics.
Template structure of a questionnaire
- Introduction: purpose, duration, anonymity and what happens with the results.
- A few demographic fields: unit, site, tenure. Only as granular as anonymity allows.
- Topic blocks with two to four questions each: one rating question for comparison, one open question for the reason.
- A closing question about the most important change.
- Thanks and a commitment on when and how you will share results.
Example questions by topic
| Topic | Rating question (1–5) | Open question for the reason |
|---|---|---|
| Satisfaction | I enjoy working at this company. | What would need to change for you to still enjoy working here in three years? |
| Leadership | My manager gives me useful feedback. | Describe a situation in which you felt supported or left alone by your manager. |
| Workload | My workload is manageable within agreed hours. | What costs you the most time or energy in a typical week without creating value? |
| Collaboration | Collaboration with other departments works well. | Where does work get stuck between teams, and why? |
| Development | I see a career perspective for myself here. | What would you need to grow over the next two years? |
| Change | I understand why our company is changing right now. | What about the current change is unclear or hard to follow for you? |
| Retention | I would recommend this company as an employer. | What last made you think about leaving the company? |
| Culture & trust | I can raise problems openly without fear of consequences. | Which topic do people avoid raising openly here? |
More example questions for your questionnaire
- I have the information I need to do my job.
- My work is recognized.
- Goals and priorities in my team are clear.
- Decisions are communicated in a way I can follow.
- I have enough room to make decisions.
- Our tools and systems support my work.
- I can balance work and private life well.
- What is the one obstacle you would remove tomorrow?
- What should leadership know about your daily work that they probably do not know?
- What works so well here that we must not lose it?
Common mistakes in questions
- Double-barreled questions: "My manager is fair and competent." Anyone who agrees with only one part cannot answer sensibly.
- Leading wording: "How much do you value our flexible working hours?" presumes agreement.
- Too many questions: beyond roughly 15 minutes, answer quality drops noticeably.
- Only scales: a score of 3.2 shows a problem but not its cause.
- No follow-up: people who saw no reaction to the last survey answer more briefly next time.
Where questionnaires reach their limits
Open questions in a questionnaire help, but answers often stay short. Nobody follows up when someone writes "too much bureaucracy". That is where the gap between metric and decision opens: you know workload is an issue, but not which process causes it.
Synfia closes this gap with confidential conversations that follow up across your workforce where it matters. We take responsibility for the research question, the conversations and the analysis, and deliver a decision memo with prioritized causes and recommendations for leadership. Audio is never stored.
Frequently asked questions
How many questions should an employee survey have?
Annual surveys typically use 20 to 35 questions, pulse surveys 5 to 10. What matters is that every question contributes to a decision.
Which scale works best for employee surveys?
Usually a five-point agreement scale. It is easy to understand and compare. Add open questions for the reasons.
How do we ensure anonymity?
Only report groups above a minimum size, often five to ten people, and keep demographic fields coarse. Communicate these rules upfront.