42 Best Employee Engagement Survey Questions by Categories

According to research, employee engagement in the US has been on the decline ever since 2020.

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If you want to increase employee engagement, you first need to see where you are currently standing, which you can do through engagement surveys. To get more accurate results, we suggest conducting the survey anonymously and letting your employees express how they actually feel.

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If you don't know how to measure employee engagement and where to even start, don't worry. We've gathered the best employee engagement survey questions that will provide you with insights into employee satisfaction and motivation and help you increase engagement.

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42 best employee engagement survey questions to use

Here are some ideas for your employee engagement questionnaire, organized into different categories.

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Working environment and culture

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When conducting employee engagement surveys, questions about the workplace environment and organizational culture are important for measuring the culture index and seeing whether your employees feel good and fit in. Here are some ideas:

Would you say that communication among your team members is effective? Why/Why not?
Describe how our company values your contribution.
What are your favorite and least favorite aspects of our organization's culture?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate our company's problem-solving?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how in sync is your team?
On a scale of 1 to 10, rate the overall atmosphere in the office.

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Job responsibilities

Finding out what your employees' job motivators are can lead to growth and development not only of individual employees but also in terms of meeting company goals. They also help you set clear job responsibilities, making sure that everyone has a fair workload and that the responsibilities are equally distributed. Here are some questions to help you:

Do you think your skills match your daily responsibilities? Why/Why not?
What do you do when the workload becomes hard to handle, and do your teammates step in and help?
Do you think that the work that you're doing is challenging enough?
How often do you feel the need to work overtime?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how meaningful is the work you're doing?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how well do you manage everyday stress?

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Leadership

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This set of questions can help you either strengthen your coaching leadership style or change it for good. You can also see how impactful your leadership is on employee engagement and whether you need to change and improve your style of communicating and passing on information. Here are some ideas:

Do you believe our company's leaders have the skills to manage and improve the company?
Do you feel that your immediate manager supports you?
To what extent are you able to take over the initiative when needed, and how often?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how honest are the senior leaders at our company?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how comfortable are you approaching your leaders with job-related concerns?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate leadership effectiveness in our company?

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Feedback and recognition

Developing a regular feedback culture should be one of your priorities but you should also consider how your employees like to receive feedback and recognition. Check out this article on the 5 languages of appreciation in the workplace for more details. Here are some employee feedback questions to ask:

How often do you receive recognition for your contribution to your team or company?
Do you feel that the feedback you receive is constructive and helpful?
Please provide us with a few constructive feedback examples you've received so far.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how clear is the communication channel for providing feedback?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how safe do you feel when giving feedback to your leaders?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how fair is the recognition distribution in our company?

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Professional development and training

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This set of questions can help you understand how satisfied your employees are with the current career development opportunities in your company and come up with a personalized professional development plan. Here are some ideas:

Do you feel that our company provides enough professional development opportunities?
What learning opportunities does our company offer, and how accessible are they?
How often do you get a chance to participate in training programs?
How much time do you have to dedicate to training and development on a weekly or monthly basis?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how well do the training programs prepare you to meet real-world challenges?
On a scale of 1 to 10, rate the support you get from your manager to participate in training programs.

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Team collaboration

The success of your company depends on individual teams and their collaboration skills. The following questions can help you learn more about the dynamics within a team and whether there are certain areas to work on.

Do you see yourself working with the same team in the future?
How often does miscommunication happen, and what do you do when it occurs?
Describe a situation in which you and your colleagues disagreed on a matter and how you resolved it.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how well do your team members collaborate?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how successful is your team at making important decisions?
On a scale of 1 to 10, rate the interpersonal relationships within your team.

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Work-life balance

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Increasing employee engagement often goes beyond ensuring a positive work environment and invites you to focus on their overall well-being, happiness, and satisfaction. Employees who are stressed and overworked can not give their best nor provide excellent customer service. The following employee satisfaction survey questions can help you prevent burnout and reduce employee turnover:

What does your current work schedule look like, and would you like to change something?
How does a healthy work-life balance look to you?
Do you believe that our company offers enough flexibility so that you can fit into your schedule all other obligations outside work?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your work-life balance?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how often do you have to work outside your working hours?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how often do you reschedule personal affairs due to work?

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How can Effy AI help with your employee engagement survey?

Effy AI is one of the best employee survey tools that can help you automate employee engagement surveys and reduce the time necessary to complete and analyze them.

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Here are its time-saving features:

Ready-to-use templates: You'll no longer have to spend hours creating your employee surveys. Our software comes with plenty of templates for employee engagement surveys but also other types of performance management such as 360-feedback example templates.
Large question bank: You can choose from a large base of carefully curated employee survey questions that will help you get insight into employee motivation, performance, and satisfaction.
AI reports: There's no need to spend hours analyzing survey responses and employee sentiment when our AI features can analyze and summarize responses, creating a comprehensive and actionable employee report.
Slack integration: Our employee engagement software eliminates friction and allows your employees to fill in the surveys without leaving the app where they spend a lot of time every day. It's possible to distribute and fill in employee engagement surveys directly in Slack, which can significantly increase the response rate.

And the best part? You can access features like template library, unlimited reviews, Slack integration, and automated notifications completely for free. There's no secret – our base plan is forever free and available to everyone!

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Conclusion

Why waste time creating employee engagement surveys manually when you can pick a template and choose questions from our extensive question bank?

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Effy AI not only saves time for both employees and HR managers, but it can also significantly improve engagement thanks to its interactive surveys.

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FAQs

What are the best employee engagement questions?

The best employee engagement questions might be open-ended survey questions, and they should focus on evaluating areas such as job satisfaction, company culture, communication, collaboration, and recognition.

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How many questions should there be in an employee engagement survey?

It depends on how much time your employees have and how motivated they are to participate in a survey, but as a rule of thumb, your surveys shouldn't have more than 20-30 questions to avoid survey fatigue, which can affect the quality of the results. Of course, there's a big difference between quick pulse surveys, which you can do often and the annual employee engagement survey, which can be longer and more detailed.

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How do you write an employee engagement survey?

First, determine the areas and topics you want to cover based on the goals of your employee survey. You can then use an engagement survey question base from this article or our software to pick questions for each category or use them as inspiration to come up with your own questions.

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How do you measure employee engagement?

You can see how engaged employees are through performance reviews, engagement surveys, peer feedback, or during the one-on-one sessions. Key metrics to consider for measuring employee engagement are eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score), employee satisfaction, retention rate, performance data, and peer recognition.

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What are the 5 Cs of employee engagement?

The five Cs stand for Communication, Collaboration, Care, Contribution and Congratulations, and they're the main pillars for measuring employee engagement.

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