If you’re looking for the best employee engagement survey questions, these 32 questions have the highest response rates in Know Your Team â and share four distinct characteristics.

âHow engaged are my employees, really?â We ask ourselves this, as leadersâââand then write our employee engagement surveys questions, determined to find an answer. Yet during this process, we often find ourselves resorting to the familiar stock survey questions:
âWhat do you think could improve in the company?â
âHow likely are you to recommend a friend to work at our company?â
âOn a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate work-life balance?â
Itâs okay. These arenât necessarily dangerous questions to ask. But youâll notice when you ask them, usually, one of two things happen: You get the responses back with a sense of disappointmentâââonly a handful of folks answered the question you really wanted people to answer. Or, you read through the answers and, while almost everyone responded, the answers themselves arenât very revealing. You already knew or couldâve surmised what everyone ended up sharing.
You reflect on the employee engagement survey and think, âWell, we likely didnât ask the right questions.â
Youâre probably right.
After more than five years of research across 15,000+ people using Know Your Team, weâve noticed how much the quality of the questions you ask as a leader determines the quality of the answers you receive. If the question is vague and general (âHowâs it going?â), the response is vague and general (âFine.â) If the question is half-hearted and boiler-plate (âWhat could be better?â), the response is half-hearted and boiler-plate (âNothing I can think of at the momentâ).
What makes for the best employee engagement survey questions to ask?
We took a look at the questions asked through Know Your Teamâââour hundreds of questions weâve researched and written, and the hundreds of questions our customers have writtenâââand pulled the questions with the highest response rates.
Interestingly enough, these questions tended to share one of more the following characteristics:
- Specific. While seemingly obvious, itâs incredible what a difference in the degree of specificity of a question can make. For example, instead of asking âHow can we improve?â, give this question a shot: âWhatâs one thing we could have improved about last month went?â The latter, more specific questions almost always results in a more specific response. Here are some tips I have for asking more specific questions as a leader.
- Timely. Ask a question relevant to whatâs currently happening in the team, and youâre far more likely to get an interesting or surprising answer. For example, if you have an all-team meeting coming up, ask, âWhatâs the most memorable all-team meeting (if any) youâve had, and why?â A question thatâs germane to the moment feels less arbitrary, and, accordingly, will help encourage more actionable responses.
- Provocative. Questions that are trite and unassuming are naturally not going to prompt folks to deeply reflect and share a meaningful insight. Consider how provocative your questions are. Do they tap at something thatâs typically considered taboo within your team? To they touch on an area your team often forgets to consider?
- Vulnerable. This is key. Folks will be more likely to share a candid response if the question admits a bit of vulnerability in some way. For instance, instead of asking, âDo you feel micromanaged?â, try asking, âWhen was a time recently when you felt micromanaged?â The second question is more vulnerable: It assumes youâre already micromanaging in some way.
Now, of course, a question having one of these characteristics or more doesnât guarantee youâll learn something unexpected or particularly incisive. But at the very least, these questions are likely to encourage more people to respondâââand more interesting responses.
- Have you met the last person we hired?
- How many miles do you travel to/from work each day, and how long does it take?
- Is risk-taking in the team encouraged, and what happens when people fail?
- Do you want more feedback about your performance?
- Do we get together as a whole company often enough?
- What would you want our team to be known for 20 years from now?
- Have you ever been afraid to suggest an idea at work because you thought someone might shoot it down?
- Do you feel like you know what is expected of you in each of the areas you are responsible for?
- If someone asked you to describe the vision of the company, would a clear answer immediately come to mind?
- How is our team doing with gender equality? (You can keep your response private, it wonât be shared.)
- Do you have time in your day to learn?
- Do you feel like we have too many meetings?
- What is the most repetitive part of your job, and do you have any suggestions for streamlining it?
- What changes would you suggest making to our monthly team meeting structure?
- Do we provide enough context about how weâre doing as a company?
- Are there things you donât know about the company that you feel you should know?
- Is there one specific part of your job that you find the most difficult? What is it and why?
- Which core value of the team speaks to you most, and why?
- Do you crave more depth in any area of the work you do?
- What are your top 2 wishlist items for your desk/work station?
- Do you feel like your ideas are being considered?
- Do you feel comfortable speaking up if you see something at work that doesnât feel right?
- Are you afraid of anything at work?
- Do we take the time to recognize each other for a job well done?
- Are you proud of how we treat our customers?
- Is there anyone at the company you wish you could apprentice under or shadow for a day?
- Are there any small things we could do to show our appreciation for each otherâs work?
- Did you have at least one 4-hour block of uninterrupted time to work last week?
- Have you been confused by any recent decisions at the company?
- What is your most productive time of day and environment?
- Are there any benefits we donât offer that youâd like to see us offer?
- Did you take a vacation last year?
If any of these questions made you a little uneasy at the thought of asking them to your teamâââthatâs a good thing. It means you might hear something you donât want to hear, or something completely unexpected.
Thatâs the point of a good employee engagement survey, after all. Youâre shining light in dark corners, and taking a magnifying glass to the cracks in the patina.
Look forward to seeing what your team thinks.
đ Donât worry about copy ân pasting all these questionsâŚđ Use our Culture Question Tool in Know Your Team to automatically ask these employee pulse survey questionsâââplus 300+ other questions, backed by researchâââto your team. These questions will help you uncover meaningful insights from your team, and how engaged they really are. Check it out and try our Culture Question in Know Your Team today.

Great Article Claire! Employee Engagement Survey is an important factor as it directs towards an organizationâs employees to understand the level of engagement of employees in an organization. Some factors to measure the Employee Engagement Survey are Employee motivation levels, Alignment of employeeâs understanding with overall organizational goals, Understanding employee mood, and morale, Gathering insights on how to improve employee productivity through engagement, Analyzing team level survey responses for cross-team benchmarking. From aiding employees in the onboarding process to handling their records right until they exit the organization, AI aids employee engagement and helps HR to retain valuable talent. Tools like CSAT.AI and MaestroQA have been adopted in the organization to get a better Employee Engagement Survey.
I really enjoyed this article. I am learning so many things from your blog. How to engage with customers is there any latest techniques for that?