50 Employee Engagement Survey Questions That Work

In today’s dynamic work environment, understanding how employees feel about their roles, teams, and leadership is more critical than ever. Recent findings from Gallup’s 2024 State of the Global Workplace report reveal that global employee engagement has declined to 21%, marking only the second drop in over a decade. This disengagement is not just a morale issue—it has tangible consequences, with lost productivity costing the global economy an estimated $438 billion in 2024 alone.

Employee engagement surveys serve as a structured, insightful method to gauge connection, motivation, and satisfaction across your workforce. However, crafting an effective survey goes beyond assembling a list of questions. It’s about selecting questions that delve into what truly matters and leveraging the results to drive meaningful change. Whether your focus is on general satisfaction, team dynamics, or the nuances of remote work culture, the right questions can uncover invaluable insights.

At Heartcount, we believe that asking the right employee engagement survey questions is the first step toward cultivating a more connected and motivated workplace. With features like data-driven insights and customizable surveys, Heartcount empowers organizations to transform feedback into actionable strategies—consistently and at scale.

In this guide, you’ll discover 50 of the most effective employee engagement questions, thoughtfully grouped by theme to assist you in building smarter surveys and gaining a deeper understanding of your team.

What is an Employee Engagement Survey?

An employee engagement survey is a structured tool used to measure how connected, motivated, and satisfied employees feel at work. These surveys go beyond surface-level satisfaction to explore deeper insights—such as how emotionally invested employees are in their roles, how aligned they feel with company values, and whether they see a future for themselves within the organisation.

Engagement surveys serve as a consistent and strategic way to check the pulse of your workforce. They help uncover what’s working well and what may be causing disengagement—insights that are often missed through informal conversations or annual performance reviews alone. When thoughtfully designed and regularly deployed, these surveys provide a reliable foundation for understanding employee sentiment, both on a team level and across the organisation as a whole.

Unlike ad-hoc feedback or spontaneous check-ins, employee engagement surveys are built around specific themes and metrics. They typically include a mix of close-ended and open-ended questions—each serving a unique and complementary purpose.

Close-ended questions are structured and quantifiable, often using scales (e.g. 1–5 or strongly agree to strongly disagree). These are ideal for tracking sentiment across time and comparing results across teams or departments. For example, “Do you feel your work is valued by the team?” provides measurable data that’s easy to benchmark.
Open-ended questions, on the other hand, invite narrative feedback in the employee’s own words. While harder to analyse at scale, they offer richer context and help explain why people responded the way they did. For instance, asking “What could your manager do to better support your professional growth?” can uncover nuance that numbers alone can’t.

In this guide, we primarily focus on close-ended employee engagement survey questions—because they allow organisations to collect actionable, consistent data that scales well across larger teams. However, we strongly recommend pairing them with a few targeted open-ended questions in your actual survey to capture deeper insights and identify opportunities you may not have anticipated.

The structure and consistency of these surveys make them particularly powerful for tracking trends over time. Whether you’re monitoring morale, evaluating leadership impact, or testing the results of a new initiative, engagement surveys help you measure progress and adjust course with confidence.

To get the most value, organisations often turn to platforms that provide data-driven insights and visual analytics, transforming raw feedback into actionable information. These tools enable leaders to identify patterns, benchmark performance, and prioritise the changes that will have the biggest impact.

By acting on the insights collected, companies can improve everything from communication and recognition practices to leadership development and team dynamics. In doing so, they not only enhance engagement—they also foster a workplace culture where employees feel seen, heard, and genuinely supported.

Why Surveys Are an Effective Way to Increase Employee Engagement

Surveys give employees a voice—one that can be heard at scale and over time. When thoughtfully designed and consistently deployed, they create an open channel for honest feedback, helping organisations stay in tune with their workforce. Whether you’re focusing on employee engagement survey questions or broader employee experience survey questions, this sense of being heard is a key driver of engagement on its own.

What makes surveys especially powerful is their ability to reveal patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed. For example, when pulse surveys are used regularly, managers can quickly pick up on dips in morale or communication breakdowns before they escalate. Tools that offer automated employee pulse check surveys can streamline this process, ensuring regular feedback without overwhelming employees.

It’s also worth noting that strong response rates make these insights more reliable and actionable. Understanding the factors that influence survey response rates can help ensure your engagement surveys capture a broad and accurate picture of employee sentiment.

Additionally, surveys foster a culture of transparency and continuous improvement. By showing that feedback leads to action, whether through individual check-ins or broader team engagement questions, organisations can build trust—an essential foundation for boosting long-term employee commitment and satisfaction.

How Often Should You Run Employee Engagement Surveys?

There’s no single right frequency for employee engagement surveys—but consistency and purpose matter more than volume. The ideal cadence depends on what you want to measure and how quickly you plan to act on feedback.

1.) Annual Surveys

Best for getting a broad, strategic overview of engagement across the company. They help identify long-term trends, benchmark progress year over year, and align engagement data with big-picture initiatives like culture, leadership, and values.

2.) Pulse Surveys

Short and regular (monthly or quarterly), pulse surveys offer real-time insights and are ideal for tracking ongoing sentiment or monitoring the impact of recent changes. With platforms like Heartcount, these quick check-ins can be automated without adding extra overhead.

3.) Employee Lifecycle Surveys

Sent at key moments like onboarding, promotions, or exits, lifecycle surveys provide context-specific insights into how employees experience each phase of their journey. These are useful for spotting engagement gaps that might be missed in broader surveys.

No matter the type, mixing survey formats helps you get both the high-level view and the day-to-day nuance needed to make informed, impactful changes.

Best Practices for Running Employee Engagement Surveys

To get meaningful results from your engagement surveys, it’s not just about asking the right questions—it’s about how you implement the process. Here are practical, proven best practices to ensure your survey efforts actually lead to insight and impact:

Define your objective before drafting questions

Every survey should have a clear goal. Are you measuring general morale? Testing leadership trust? Evaluating a recent change? Be specific. Without a defined objective, results can become too broad to act on—or worse, misinterpreted.

Keep surveys focused and concise

Long surveys lead to drop-off and survey fatigue. Limit your survey to 10–15 targeted questions, and only ask what you intend to act on. Use a mix of scaled (quantitative) and open-ended (qualitative) questions to balance clarity with depth.

Time your surveys strategically

Avoid survey fatigue by aligning your cadence with your feedback capacity. For example, if you’re not prepared to act monthly, quarterly pulse surveys might be more realistic. Don’t survey just because “it’s time”—do it when you’re ready to respond.

Prioritise anonymity and psychological safety

Employees give honest feedback only when they feel safe doing so. Make it clear that responses are anonymous and handled confidentially. Use platforms that protect identity, and never single out small teams in reporting.

Act fast—and communicate what you’re doing

One of the fastest ways to kill engagement is to ask for feedback and ignore it. After every survey, communicate the key takeaways, what you’re doing about them, and when employees can expect updates. Even small actions matter if they’re timely and visible.

Use tools built for insights, not spreadsheets

Modern platforms like Heartcount offer data-driven insights and visual reporting that make analysis faster and easier. Avoid wasting time exporting results manually—focus that energy on action instead.

Revisit and iterate

Use feedback loops to refine your approach. Did employees feel the questions were relevant? Did they see outcomes? Engagement surveys should evolve alongside your organisation—not remain static.

What are Good Employee Engagement Survey Questions?

The quality of your survey hinges on the clarity and relevance of your questions. Good employee engagement survey questions aren’t just general reflections—they’re engineered to produce specific, actionable insights. If a question can’t be directly linked to a decision, initiative, or intervention, it probably doesn’t belong in your survey.

Strong questions fall into two camps:

Diagnostic questions, which identify problems (e.g. “Do you feel comfortable giving feedback to your manager?”), and
Directional questions, which guide improvement (e.g. “Do you see a path for growth in your current role?”).

To get meaningful data, questions should be tied to known engagement drivers like communication, recognition, role clarity, leadership support, and psychological safety. But even well-written questions can fall flat if they’re not relevant to your context. That’s where customisation becomes essential.

Using custom employee surveys allows organisations to tailor questions to reflect their unique culture, priorities, and challenges—whether it’s tracking post-reorg sentiment or checking in after a new leadership hire. This ensures the insights gathered are immediately useful and contextually grounded.

When paired with the best practices outlined in the previous section—such as limiting surveys to actionable themes, ensuring psychological safety, and committing to follow-up—well-constructed questions can transform surveys from passive checkboxes into active tools for organisational growth.

50 Employee Engagement Survey Question Examples

Creating an impactful survey means covering multiple dimensions of the employee experience. To help you build a comprehensive approach, we’ve grouped 50 carefully selected employee survey questions into key categories. These include a mix of employee engagement questions, employee experience survey questions, and team engagement questions, all designed to reflect real workplace dynamics. You can use them as-is or tailor them to match your company’s tone and goals.

Each set of questions below is crafted to shed light on different engagement drivers—from day-to-day satisfaction to long-term growth and inclusion. Whether you’re launching your first survey or refining an existing approach, these examples can guide your strategy and help you collect insights that lead to meaningful, lasting improvements.

General Employee Engagement and Satisfaction

This set of questions targets how employees feel about their daily experience, motivation, and connection to the company’s mission. Each one gives you direct insight into core engagement drivers—and highlights early signs of issues like low morale, unclear expectations, or burnout.

Do you feel proud to work at this company?
Helps gauge emotional commitment and brand alignment. If pride is low, your values or reputation might not be resonating.
How satisfied are you with your current role and responsibilities?
Reveals if people feel their skills are being used effectively—or if they’re underchallenged or overwhelmed.
Do you feel motivated to do your best work every day?
Measures day-to-day engagement levels. A drop here may signal misalignment with goals or poor management.
How likely are you to recommend this company as a great place to work?
Functions as an internal eNPS (employee Net Promoter Score), a strong indicator of overall sentiment.
Do you have the tools and resources needed to perform your job well?
Pinpoints practical blockers. Low scores mean people are wasting energy fighting systems instead of contributing.
Are you recognised for your contributions at work?
Tests whether appreciation is visible and consistent. Recognition is a proven driver of long-term engagement.
Do you feel your work makes a meaningful impact?
Explores purpose. If employees don’t see how their work matters, motivation and retention usually suffer.
Are you satisfied with your work-life balance?
Measures well-being and sustainability. This is often one of the first signals of burnout or overwork.
Do you feel valued by your team and colleagues?
Looks at peer relationships and inclusiveness—often overlooked but central to how people feel day to day.
Is your workload manageable on a regular basis?
Indicates potential strain. High workload stress is one of the top contributors to disengagement and attrition.

These questions don’t just track sentiment—they reveal what it feels like to work at your company right now. Use them to prioritise where action is needed most.

Manager Effectiveness Questions

Managers directly influence engagement through communication, feedback, support, and development. The questions below help assess how well individual leaders are performing—not just on delivery, but as people leaders who shape the everyday employee experience.

Does your manager communicate clearly and consistently?
Low clarity often signals alignment issues or operational friction. If employees are unsure what’s expected, engagement drops fast.
Do you feel supported by your manager in your role?
Gauges whether managers are actively helping people succeed—or just assigning tasks and stepping back.
Does your manager provide regular and constructive feedback?
Looks at growth-oriented leadership. A lack of feedback can stunt development and create confusion around performance expectations.
Do you feel comfortable approaching your manager with concerns or questions?
A key indicator of psychological safety. If trust isn’t present, honest conversations—and innovation—won’t happen.
Does your manager recognise your achievements and efforts?
Recognition from a manager carries major weight. Consistent acknowledgment builds motivation and loyalty.
Does your manager set clear goals and expectations?
Without goal clarity, teams can’t prioritise effectively or understand how success is measured.
Does your manager encourage your development and growth?
Indicates whether managers are invested in people’s long-term careers—or only short-term outputs.
Do you trust your manager to act in your best interest?
Captures relational trust, which is foundational for team stability, especially during change.
Does your manager promote a healthy work environment?
Reflects how well managers model and enforce standards around respect, collaboration, and boundaries.
Is your manager effective in resolving team conflicts?
Tension that goes unaddressed leads to friction, turnover, and lower team cohesion.

Used together, these questions form the backbone of a manager feedback loop that can fuel leadership coaching, succession planning, and broader engagement efforts.

Company Culture & Work Environment

These questions are designed to assess how your culture actually feels to the people living in it—not how it looks in your values slide deck. They help identify whether the work environment supports collaboration, inclusion, and psychological safety across all teams and locations.

Do you feel comfortable being yourself at work?
A core inclusion metric. Low scores may indicate cultural pressure to conform, or fear of judgment—especially for underrepresented groups.
Is collaboration encouraged and supported within your team?
Uncovers whether teamwork is a lived value or just aspirational. Helps flag siloed departments or poor cross-functional dynamics.
Do you feel safe sharing feedback or concerns?
Tells you if employees trust the system and people enough to be honest. Silence here is usually a red flag for deeper issues.
Are company values reflected in day-to-day operations?
Reveals if your culture has operational integrity—or if there’s a disconnect between stated values and lived experience.
Is there a culture of mutual respect across teams?
A strong indicator of workplace civility and professionalism, especially across functions or seniority levels.
Are company decisions communicated transparently?
Tests how open leadership is with information and whether teams feel kept in the loop—or left in the dark.
Does your work environment support your productivity?
Captures physical and digital workspace quality, and whether it helps or hinders performance.
Is the workplace free from discrimination or bias?
Directly asks about fairness and equity in practice. If this scores low, deeper audits on policy, leadership, or peer behaviour are essential.
Are employees treated fairly regardless of role or background?
Reveals if perceived equity is consistent across teams—key to building trust and retaining diverse talent.

Use these questions to locate disconnects between your cultural aspirations and what employees actually experience—and act on them before misalignment impacts retention, performance, or trust.

Career Growth & Development Questions

Growth opportunities are one of the strongest predictors of long-term engagement. If employees feel like they’re stagnating or overlooked, motivation drops—and so does retention. These questions assess how supported people feel in their development, how clear career paths are, and whether the organisation is investing in future talent.

Do you have opportunities to grow within the company?
Captures internal mobility sentiment. If this scores low, you may be losing talent to competitors offering clearer pathways.
Are you encouraged to develop new skills?
Helps gauge whether managers and leaders are actively fostering learning—or just focused on immediate outputs.
Does the company invest in your professional development?
Goes beyond encouragement and asks whether real time and budget are allocated to growth.
Do you receive feedback that helps you improve?
Looks at the feedback culture. Development can’t happen if input is infrequent, unclear, or generic.
Do you have a clear understanding of possible career paths?
Reveals whether roles are mapped out clearly enough for employees to plan ahead and stay committed.
Are promotions and raises based on merit?
Directly touches fairness and trust. If this is perceived as political or inconsistent, it undermines your entire development strategy.
Do you feel challenged in your current role?
A lack of challenge often signals boredom or underutilised talent—while too much might point to burnout.
Are learning opportunities accessible and relevant to your goals?
Measures whether training options actually match employee needs—not just what’s available.
Is your career progression on track with your expectations?
Combines perception and reality. Misalignment here often leads to disengagement and exit.

Understanding the answers to these questions allows you to design development initiatives that are timely, relevant, and trusted. For more on how growth ties into the broader employee journey, see Heartcount’s guide on how to measure employee experience.

Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging

Inclusion isn’t about checkboxes—it’s about lived experience. These questions go beyond surface-level diversity stats to uncover how equitable and safe your culture actually feels to the people inside it.

Do you feel included and respected by your team?
Directly gauges interpersonal belonging. If employees feel excluded at the peer level, broader D&I efforts won’t stick.
Does the company actively support diversity and inclusion?
Tests whether employees perceive real action—not just messaging or one-off events.
Are diverse voices heard and valued in decision-making?
Reveals how inclusion plays out in power dynamics—not just hiring practices.
Do you believe everyone has equal access to opportunities here?
One of the most critical questions. Perceived inequality in growth, visibility, or compensation can quietly erode morale, performance, and retention.

These employee experience survey questions help diagnose whether inclusion is operationalised throughout the company—or stuck at the level of intent. Responses can spotlight gaps in team dynamics, promotion practices, or leadership engagement, making it easier to take specific, targeted action that builds lasting equity.

Remote Work Experience

Remote and hybrid work models offer flexibility, but they also introduce new risks: reduced visibility, weaker collaboration, and inconsistent support. These questions help identify whether remote employees are set up to thrive—or simply left to figure things out on their own.

Do you feel as connected to the team when working remotely?
Reveals the strength of interpersonal bonds and team culture beyond the office. A lack of connection can quickly lead to disengagement or isolation.
Do you have the tools and technology you need to work from home?
Assesses whether your remote setup is actually usable. Friction with tools adds stress and chips away at productivity.
Is communication clear and timely when working remotely?
Flags any gaps in access to information. When communication breaks down, so does trust in leadership and cross-team collaboration.
Do you feel your performance is fairly evaluated, regardless of location?
Tests for proximity bias. Remote employees who feel overlooked are more likely to withdraw—or leave.

What’s especially important to monitor in distributed teams is employee well-being. Without physical cues or in-person touchpoints, it’s harder to spot signs of burnout, overwork, or loneliness. These subtle stressors, if unaddressed, can quietly erode engagement over time. Heartcount explores this in more detail in their guide on employee well-being in remote and hybrid environments —a critical read for teams navigating distributed culture.

Future Outlook and Alignment

Engagement isn’t only about how employees feel today—it’s also about whether they see a future for themselves inside the company. This set of questions uncovers how confident people are in the organisation’s direction, how connected they feel to that vision, and whether leadership is earning their trust.

Do you believe in the company’s vision for the future?
Measures strategic buy-in. If belief is low, it could point to a lack of clarity, credibility, or relevance in the vision being communicated.
Do you understand how your role contributes to company goals?
Assesses line-of-sight between individual work and larger outcomes. A gap here often signals weak internal communication or role ambiguity.
Are you optimistic about your future with the company?
Captures personal alignment and long-term intent. Low optimism often correlates with higher turnover risk—even before dissatisfaction shows elsewhere.
Does the company adapt well to change?
Highlights organisational agility and employee confidence during transitions. It’s especially useful to track post-restructuring, during rapid growth, or amid shifting markets.

These questions help you assess more than morale—they show whether people feel secure and inspired enough to grow with the company. If responses here trend negative, it’s often a sign that messaging from the top needs rethinking—or that strategic alignment is breaking down on the frontlines.

Act on Survey Results

Collecting feedback is only the first step—what truly matters is what you do with it. Acting on responses to your employee engagement survey questions shows employees that their voices aren’t just heard but respected and valued. When teams see real changes come from their input, trust deepens and engagement naturally grows.

Start by analysing the data with intention. Identify clear patterns, look for outliers, and prioritise areas where improvement will have the greatest impact. Tools that provide data-driven insights can help you break down the results by team, department, or topic, making it easier to pinpoint what needs attention.

Transparency is key. Share an overview of the findings with your team—what you heard, what actions you’ll take, and why. If you need inspiration on how to share your findings effectively, this guide to presenting employee engagement survey results offers useful tips and practical steps.

For best results, follow up with regular pulse surveys or customised questions to track progress and adapt strategies as needed. Engagement isn’t static—keeping a finger on the pulse helps organisations stay agile and responsive to changing needs.

If you’re ready to transform feedback into meaningful action, explore how Heartcount can support your organisation with personalised insights, automated survey tools, and features built for long-term impact.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What are the best employee engagement survey questions to ask?

Focus on questions tied to key drivers like recognition, communication, and leadership. For example, “Do you feel your work is valued?” and “Do you trust leadership to make the right decisions?”

2. How many questions should an employee engagement survey include?

Keep it between 10–15 well-targeted questions. Use a mix of employee engagement, employee experience, and team engagement questions for a complete view.

3. How often should we run employee engagement surveys?

Run annual surveys for big-picture insights, and pulse surveys quarterly or monthly to track changes. Use lifecycle surveys at key moments like onboarding or exit.

4. Should we include open-ended questions in our survey?

Yes you can include 1–2 open-ended questions to capture context and ideas you might miss with scaled responses, but it’s not a must.

5. What should we do after collecting employee engagement survey results?

Act on feedback quickly. Share findings, communicate next steps, and follow up with targeted questions to track progress.