55 Staff Survey Questions and a Free Template

If you are putting a staff survey together and you are not sure what to actually ask, this is the question bank I would use. Tick the ones that fit, copy them into whatever you are using, and get on with it. It costs nothing, there is no sign up, and nothing you pick reaches us. It saves as you go, but only onto your own computer.

Pick your questions· How many to ask· Keeping it anonymous· What to do with the answers· Questions

Now, most staff survey templates you find are a PDF sitting behind an email form, and when you finally get it you still have to retype every question into whatever tool you are actually using. So this one works the other way round. Pick what you want and copy it out in one go.

The first six themes below follow the six areas the Health and Safety Executive uses to look at work-related stress. The rest cover the things people usually want from a staff satisfaction or engagement survey. And if you would rather not build, send and score one yourself, Workplace Lens is our own tool that covers the same six areas anonymously and tells you what the answers mean. Free to get started.

Pick your staff survey questions

How many questions to ask

Think in minutes rather than questions. Aim for under five, and most people will finish it. Go past ten and you will get a pile of half-completed forms and a load of people who now think surveys are a waste of time.

In practice that is somewhere between ten and twenty questions, depending on how many open text ones you add. The counter under the form works it out as you go, so you do not have to guess.

You can always ask again in three months. A short survey you run twice a year tells you far more than a long one nobody finishes.

If you are not sure, start with the quick pulse and add the themes that match what you are actually worried about.

Keeping it anonymous

Anonymous means anonymous. Not “we will not look”, actually anonymous. Nobody is going to tell you their manager is the problem if their name is sitting at the top of the form, and the questions about support and relationships are the ones you most need honest answers to.

The other thing that helps is telling people what happened after the last one. Response rates go up when people can see that answering changed something.

What to do with the answers

This is the part that decides whether any of it was worth doing.

When the answers come back, look for the areas scoring worst rather than the individual comments that sting the most. One angry comment is one person having a bad week. A whole theme scoring low is a pattern, and patterns are what you can actually fix.

Then share something back, even if it is uncomfortable. Three findings and three things you are going to do about them is enough. People do not expect you to fix everything, they want to know you read it.

Some of what you find will be structural, so workload, resourcing, role clarity, a manager who needs support to manage. Those need structural answers and no amount of training fixes them. Some of it is the pressure that is not going anywhere, and that is where a session giving people practical tools earns its place. It works best alongside the structural fixes rather than instead of them.

Questions people ask

What should I ask in a staff survey?

Cover the things you can actually change. Start with workload, how much say people have over their own work, and the support they get from their manager. Those three surface most of the problems.

After that, how people treat each other, whether the role is clear, and how change gets communicated. Then recognition, development, and the effect the work has on people’s health.

Worth adding one question asking whether they would recommend the place to work. That single answer moves when something is genuinely wrong, so it is the one to watch over time. The 55 questions above are grouped into exactly those themes.

How long should a staff survey be?

Judge it on time rather than question count. Under five minutes and most people finish it. Past ten minutes and completion rates fall away sharply.

A five point scale question takes about fifteen seconds, so that is somewhere between ten and twenty questions in practice. The counter under the form works it out as you pick, so you do not have to do the sums.

Can I use these questions in Google Forms or Microsoft Forms?

Yes. Press “Copy the Questions” and paste them in. They are plain text, numbered, with the scale noted at the top, so they drop into any form builder or survey platform. There is nothing to convert and no file to download unless you want the PDF version for sharing or sign-off.

Should a staff survey be anonymous?

For anything covering management, fairness or wellbeing, yes. People will not tell you their manager is the problem with their name attached. The exception is a very small team, where the answers identify people whatever the software says. Under about eight people, be upfront that it is not truly anonymous or have the conversation face to face instead.

How often should we run one?

A short pulse every three to six months beats one long annual survey, because you can see whether anything you changed actually worked. The thing that ruins the rhythm is asking again before you have done anything about the last set of answers.

What is a good response rate?

Anything over about 60% is healthy for a first survey. What matters more is whether it goes up or down next time. A falling response rate usually means people did not see anything change, which is a finding in itself.