Satisfied employees are the lifeblood of every successful business. They go above and beyond, crush their goals, delight their managers, and sweep customers off their feet. Unsatisfied employees, on the other hand… In the best case, they simply leave.

Finding out how satisfied your employees are can make a major impact not only on your HR, operations, and everyday work but also on your customer satisfaction and bottom line. 

The best way to find out if your employees are happy is to run an employee satisfaction survey. Today, we’ll show you what employee satisfaction surveys are and how you can create your own survey, along with example questions to get you started.

What is an employee satisfaction survey?

An employee satisfaction survey is a type of survey that you can build to find out how satisfied your employees are with various aspects of working in your company. This can include work conditions, salary, benefits package, health insurance, and PTO policies.

The purpose of an employee satisfaction survey is to determine how satisfied your employees are and to provide your HR team with relevant qualitative and quantitative data. You should be able to learn from this data and introduce improvements to help retain employees, increase satisfaction, boost employee morale, and lower turnover rates.

Employee satisfaction surveys can take minutes to create with the right satisfaction tools. In return, they can save thousands of dollars for your business every month. And while creating an annual employee survey is a decent start, you should strive to measure satisfaction levels more often.

Why it’s important to measure employee satisfaction

Measuring employee satisfaction shouldn’t be optional. There are quite a few important reasons for you to consider getting started with the practice if you haven’t already. 

Identifying and fixing internal issues

You can find out if there’s any smoke that’s about to become a fire. Perhaps there’s an unpleasant micromanager, your parental leave policy is broken, or there’s too much overtime every month. These surveys let you nip the problem in the bud before it escalates.

Introducing procedures and building a positive company culture

Just like your customers, satisfied employees value when you reach out for their feedback and then implement it. Employee satisfaction surveys are the first step toward a culture of appreciation and better employee engagement. Speaking of which…

Improving employee engagement

Employees who feel valued are employees who become engaged. When they get opportunities to voice their opinion, they will reward you with better productivity, collaboration and a stellar experience for your customers.

Reducing employee turnover

The average cost of a new hire is somewhere around $4,000. Even worse is the fact that the average time to find a new employee is 52 days, from the moment you put out a job ad until someone starts. Unsatisfied employees leave, and when they do, that makes a big dent in your company budget.

Employee satisfaction surveys help identify sore spots before things get bad to the point where someone wants to leave, so use them proactively and act on that feedback.

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Employee satisfaction survey questions

Employee satisfaction is a larger category and there are different subtypes of survey questions that you can ask your employees. Based on the situation and the results you’re expecting to see, you can use one or more of these survey types and mix and match these employee satisfaction survey questions.

The important thing to note is that you can configure the surveys in a way that best suits your needs. You can make these survey questions open-ended, formulate them as yes/no questions, leave a rating/Likert scale, and give a few options to choose from—everything is possible with a professional tool for employee surveys such as Survicate.

Employee engagement survey questions

Did you know that only 36% of employees feel engaged in their workplace? This translates into poor employee morale, low productivity, and high turnover rates. Employee surveys are one way to spot the employee engagement problem early.

• How engaged do you feel in the workplace?
• Would you recommend us as an employer to people you know?
• Are you proud of working for this organization?
• Do you find yourself looking at other job offers? (best for anonymous surveys)
• Do you feel motivated to do your best?
• Do you find your leaders inspiring?

Employee communication survey questions

There is no good work without good communication. Whether it’s communication between peers or employees and the management team, make sure to get employee feedback on your communication style. These employee satisfaction surveys should be run every once in a while, even if you feel like your workplace communication is clear and effective.

• How would you rate the overall communication in this organization?
• Do you feel like your goals are clearly communicated to you?
• Do you have any problems expressing yourself at work?
• How easy or difficult is it to get in touch with your managers?
• How difficult is it to find the right information when you need it at work?

Management and leadership survey questions

When you want to find out what employees think about the way you manage and lead them, ask these job satisfaction questions. You can run these types of surveys a few times per year instead of making it a one-time occurrence. These employee satisfaction survey questions are best left anonymous if you want to gather honest feedback.

• How satisfied are you with the current management style?
• How responsive is your manager to new ideas and feedback?
• Do you believe your manager is treating their employees fairly?
• Do you understand how your manager measures your output and performance at work?
• Does your manager clearly communicate their expectations?

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Work environment survey questions

Whether you work in an office or remotely, you have a certain work environment and culture (even remotely!) in place. If your employees don’t feel the work environment is supportive or conducive to more productivity and better job satisfaction, they’ll start underperforming. Employee satisfaction surveys help uncover these and other problems ahead of time.

• How do you feel about the overall atmosphere at work?
• What do you feel we can improve on as an organization?
• Do you feel appreciated in the workplace?
• Do you identify with the company’s mission and vision?
• How satisfied are you with the company culture and company values in the workplace?

Workplace wellness survey questions

Most employee satisfaction surveys have one thing in common: making the workplace better for the employee. Wellness surveys are no different, as their aim is to establish how much your organization cares about employee wellness.

• How often do you feel stressed in the workplace?
• Do you have access to healthcare?
• On a scale from 1 to 10, how important is wellness to you?
• How often do you exercise?
• Do you have access to healthy food and snacks in the workplace?
• Do you get more than 7 hours of sleep per night?

Employee recognition survey questions

When employees feel recognized, they perform well and they’re bound to stick around longer. If you want to increase your productivity and lower your turnover rate, these employee satisfaction survey questions should be on your to-do list from time to time.

• Do you feel that your work is valued in this organization?
• How often do you receive recognition from your coworkers?
• How often do you receive recognition from your managers?
• Do you feel like you’re doing meaningful work for this organization?
• What type of recognition in the workplace do you appreciate the most?

Employee benefits and compensation survey questions

Salary is just one part of the equation when it comes to employee satisfaction and what your company brings to the table. Other benefits are just as important and, ideally, you want to keep tabs on both factors before your employees start browsing job ads during their lunch break. You can do so by asking these survey questions:

• Do you feel you’re fairly compensated for your work at our organization?
• Do the benefits we offer align with your expectations?
• Which benefits do you use the most?
• How satisfied are you with our PTO policy?
• How satisfied are you with our health benefits?

Personal and professional growth survey questions

Just getting the work done is not enough for employee engagement. Your employees need to be able to grow personally and professionally in their roles. Otherwise, they might soon be looking for a new workplace with better career and personal growth opportunities. Here are some questions to capture employee feedback on this topic and measure their overall job satisfaction.

• Do you feel like you have a chance to grow professionally at work?
• Do you get adequate feedback from your manager?
• Do you feel like you’re on a path to achieving your career goals?
• Do you feel like you have an opportunity to do challenging things at work?
• Do you feel like the feedback you get helps you develop and grow in your career path?

Work-life balance survey questions

Life outside of work is crucial to the well-being of your employees. A healthy work-life balance means your employees won’t burn out and will stay happy and perform well at work. Here’s an employee satisfaction survey type that everyone in your workplace will benefit from:

• How satisfied are you with your work hours?

• Do you feel like you can achieve all of your goals within your work hours?
• Do you do a lot of overtime?
• Do you tend to “bring work home”?
• Have you missed any personal events because of work lately?
• Are you struggling to stay offline after work hours?

Employee motivation survey questions

Employees who feel motivated are engaged employees who thrive in the workplace. Motivation is difficult to measure and spot in your employees, so it can be useful to ask the right questions at the right time with this survey:

• How motivated do you feel at work, in general?
• Do you find daily tasks inspiring?
• Does everyday work feel meaningful to you?
• What is your overall job satisfaction?
• Do you feel happy coming to work?

You’re one step away from measuring employee satisfaction

Ignoring employee satisfaction is like putting off a doctor's appointment. There’s a chance that nothing might happen, but there’s also a huge possibility that your business will suffer if there is something wrong. We know that creating the first employee satisfaction survey can seem like a chore, especially if you’ve never created surveys before.

Let us put you at ease: creating an employee satisfaction survey doesn’t take more than a few minutes. With Survicate, all you have to do is create an account and grab a survey template. Make a few quick edits and you can share your survey on your website, in your emails, in your Intercom or SMS campaigns—the sky is the limit.

Survicate can be used for a variety of occasions when you need to gather feedback from your existing or potential customers. Don’t take our word for it—have a look at the 125+ survey templates we offer.

And the best part is that Survicate now has a freemium plan that allows you to collect unlimited responses for one survey for 7 days. Ready to start measuring employee satisfaction?