Most employee surveys fail before anyone reads the results.
Not because the data is bad. Because the questions were wrong — too vague to be useful, too leading to get honest answers, or too many to get completed at all. The difference between a survey that tells you something real and one that produces a wall of neutral 3s comes down almost entirely to the quality of the questions.
This is a collection of 75 employee survey questions you can use in anonymous feedback surveys — grouped by topic, annotated with what each one is actually trying to surface, and built for the format that works best in a tool like Karma: short, specific, anonymous, and delivered in Slack where response rates are dramatically higher than email.
Use this as a reference. Pick the questions that match what you actually need to know right now. Run fewer, better surveys rather than one enormous annual questionnaire nobody finishes.
In this article
- Before you start: what makes a good anonymous survey question
- Employee engagement questions
- Management and leadership questions
- Culture and values questions
- Communication and transparency questions
- Wellbeing and workload questions
- Growth and development questions
- Diversity, inclusion and belonging questions
- Questions for new employees
- eNPS and recommendation questions
- Open-ended questions that surface what you didn’t know to ask
- How many questions to ask, and when
Before you start: what makes a good anonymous survey question
A good anonymous survey question has three qualities. It is specific enough that every respondent interprets it the same way. It is neutral enough that the question itself doesn’t push toward a particular answer. And it is actionable enough that whatever answer comes back, someone could plausibly do something about it.
“Do you feel supported at work?” fails on all three counts. It’s vague (supported how?), potentially leading (framing wellbeing positively), and impossible to act on without follow-up. “When you’re stuck on a problem, how easy is it to get help from your manager?” is specific, neutral, and tells you exactly what to address if the scores are low.
The other factor that matters enormously for anonymous surveys specifically is psychological safety in the question framing. People give lower scores and more candid text responses when they believe their anonymity is real. Stating clearly in the survey that all feedback is anonymous — not just once at the start but as a note on open-ended questions — consistently increases both response rates and response quality.
With that in mind: here are 75 questions worth asking.
Employee engagement questions
These questions measure how connected and motivated your team feels in their day-to-day work. They’re the backbone of any pulse survey.
1. How excited are you to come to work on most days?
The single most predictive engagement question. Low scores here correlate strongly with attrition risk.
2. How meaningful does your work feel to you right now?
Distinguishes between people who are present but disengaged from those who genuinely find their work purposeful.
3. How often do you feel like your best work goes unnoticed?
Directly surfaces a recognition gap. Useful to run alongside your peer recognition activity data.
4. How well does your role match your skills and interests?
A mismatch here is one of the most common causes of disengagement that isn’t visible from the outside.
5. How likely are you to still be working here in two years?
A retention predictor. Pair it with open-ended follow-up to understand why.
6. On a typical week, how often do you experience a sense of accomplishment in your work?
More specific than general satisfaction questions — it asks about frequency rather than feeling.
7. How much does your work at this company feel like it matters beyond your team?
Tests whether people feel connected to the broader mission, not just their immediate responsibilities.
8. How often do you feel energised rather than drained at the end of a workday?
A wellbeing-adjacent engagement signal. Useful for catching burnout early.
9. How valued do you feel as an individual contributor here?
Separates from recognition questions by focusing on the individual’s sense of personal worth to the organisation.
10. When you think about your work over the last month, how proud are you of what you’ve contributed?
Asks about recent work rather than general feelings, which produces more accurate and actionable responses.
Management and leadership questions
Management quality is the single biggest driver of engagement outside of the work itself. These questions are also the most sensitive — anonymity matters here more than anywhere else.
11. How well does your manager communicate what’s expected of you?
Clarity of expectations is one of the most reliable predictors of performance and satisfaction.
12. How comfortable do you feel raising a concern or disagreement with your manager?
Tests psychological safety in the direct relationship. Low scores here usually mean problems go unreported for far too long.
13. How often does your manager give you useful, specific feedback on your work?
“Useful and specific” is the key qualifier — it distinguishes meaningful feedback from performative check-ins.
14. How much does your manager seem to care about your wellbeing, not just your output?
Distinguishes task-focused managers from people-focused ones. Important signal for teams under high pressure.
15. How well does your manager advocate for your team with senior leadership?
Surfaces whether managers are running interference for their team or leaving them unprotected.
16. When you need help, how available is your manager?
Practical accessibility — separate from how much the person likes their manager.
17. How fairly does your manager distribute recognition across the team?
Recognition fairness is a major driver of whether peer recognition culture takes hold or feels rigged.
18. How much does your manager trust you to make decisions in your area of work?
Autonomy and trust are strongly linked to engagement. Low scores here often mean micromanagement.
19. How clearly does your manager communicate the reasoning behind decisions that affect the team?
Transparency in decision-making is a distinct skill from communication generally — worth asking separately.
20. How well does your manager help you grow in your career, not just deliver on current projects?
Tests whether management conversations are purely operational or include genuine development conversations.
21. How often does your manager recognise contributions from quieter or less visible team members?
A fairness and inclusion signal within the immediate team context.
22. Overall, how would you rate the quality of management you receive day to day?
A summary question best placed at the end of a management section — after specific questions have already primed more nuanced thinking.
Culture and values questions
These questions test whether your stated culture actually matches the lived experience. They’re most valuable when run regularly so you can see whether culture initiatives are changing the scores.
23. How well do the company’s stated values match the way people actually behave here?
The most important culture question. A gap between stated values and actual behaviour is what kills culture faster than anything.
24. How proud are you to tell people outside work where you work?
An external-facing pride signal, different from internal engagement. Correlates with employer brand and eNPS.
25. How often do you see the company’s values genuinely influencing decisions?
Distinguishes values that are decorative from ones that actually shape behaviour.
26. How comfortable are you being your full self at work?
An authenticity and psychological safety question — important both as a culture signal and an inclusion signal.
27. How well does the culture here support people taking calculated risks?
Tests whether “innovation” is a value that’s actually rewarded or one that sounds good on a wall.
28. How often do you witness behaviours that feel inconsistent with what this company says it values?
Invites people to surface hypocrisy without asking them to name names.
29. How collaborative is the culture here, in practice?
“In practice” is the key qualifier — it separates the aspiration from the reality.
30. How much does the company’s culture make you want to do your best work?
A direct test of whether culture is a motivating force or a neutral background.
Communication and transparency questions
These questions are particularly useful during periods of change, growth, or uncertainty.
31. How well does leadership communicate where the company is headed?
A strategic transparency question. Particularly important for engagement during uncertain periods.
32. How often do you find out about important changes through unofficial channels rather than official ones?
The “through the grapevine” question — surfaces whether formal communication is ahead of the rumour mill or behind it.
33. How much do you trust that leadership is being honest with the team, even when the news is difficult?
Candour under pressure is one of the most important leadership qualities — and the hardest to ask about directly.
34. How clearly does your team understand the company’s priorities right now?
Clarity of priorities is distinct from communication frequency. Teams can receive a lot of communication and still be unclear on what matters most.
35. How often do you feel genuinely heard when you share feedback or ideas?
Tests whether feedback channels are functional or performative.
36. How well does information flow between teams and departments?
Cross-team communication is often a blind spot — managers see within their team clearly but not across.
37. After an all-hands or company update, how well do you understand what you should do differently?
A practical test of whether communication translates into action rather than just information.
Wellbeing and workload questions
These questions are most powerful as trend data — you want to catch declining scores early, not after someone has already burned out.
38. How manageable is your workload on a typical week?
The baseline wellbeing question. Useful as a regular pulse rather than a one-time snapshot.
39. How often do you feel pressure to work outside your normal hours?
Surfaces expectations around availability — which are often unspoken and damaging.
40. How well does the company support you in taking proper breaks and time off?
Tests whether the policy on paper matches the cultural expectation in practice.
41. How often does work stress affect your life outside work?
An important signal that requires psychological safety to answer honestly — which is why it works better in an anonymous survey than in a 1:1.
42. How sustainable is your current pace of work over the next six months?
Forward-looking — surfaces burnout risk before it’s an emergency.
43. How much flexibility do you have to manage your work in a way that fits your life?
Flexibility is one of the most valued aspects of modern work and often underestimated in its impact on engagement.
44. When you’re going through a difficult period personally, how supported do you feel by the company?
Tests the human side of the employer relationship — separate from workload or management quality.
45. How often do you feel genuinely energised by the work, as opposed to just getting through the day?
A more emotionally honest version of the standard engagement question — harder to give a socially desirable answer to.
Growth and development questions
These questions surface whether people see a future at the company — which is one of the strongest predictors of whether they’ll stay.
46. How clearly can you see a path to grow in your career here?
Visibility of a career path matters as much as whether one actually exists.
47. How often do you get opportunities to work on things that stretch your skills?
Stretch opportunities are one of the most powerful retention levers, especially for high performers.
48. How well does the company invest in your professional development?
Tests whether development is a genuine priority or a line in the handbook.
49. How much does your manager actively help you develop the skills you need for the next step in your career?
A development-specific management question — distinct from whether the manager is good at their job day-to-day.
50. How often do you feel like you’re learning something new in your role?
Learning velocity is a strong engagement predictor, particularly for younger or high-ambition team members.
51. How well does the company recognise and reward growth and improvement, not just outcomes?
Tests whether the recognition culture values progress as well as results.
52. If you wanted to move into a different area of the company, how supported would you feel in doing that?
Internal mobility as a signal of how seriously the company takes long-term development.
Diversity, inclusion and belonging questions
These questions require the most careful framing and the strongest anonymity assurances. They surface experiences that are often invisible to those not directly affected.
53. How much do you feel like you belong here, not just as a contributor but as a person?
The core belonging question — “not just as a contributor” is the important qualifier.
54. How often do you feel like your perspective is genuinely considered in team discussions?
Surfaces whether participation is equitable — particularly important for quieter team members or minority voices.
55. How fairly do you feel people are treated here, regardless of their background or identity?
A direct fairness signal — one of the most important questions in any inclusion survey.
56. How comfortable do you feel raising concerns about behaviour that felt exclusionary or unfair?
Tests psychological safety in the inclusion context specifically.
57. How often do you witness behaviour that you feel would be described as biased or exclusionary?
Moves beyond personal experience to broader observation — useful for surfacing patterns that affect specific individuals.
58. How well does leadership reflect the diversity of the team and the communities the company serves?
Representation at the top is both a practical and symbolic signal of inclusion.
59. How confident are you that decisions about pay, promotion, and opportunity are made fairly here?
Fairness in high-stakes decisions is one of the strongest drivers of trust and retention among underrepresented groups.
60. How welcome do you feel bringing your own perspective to conversations, even when it differs from the majority view?
Tests intellectual inclusion — whether diversity of thought is as valued as demographic diversity.
Questions for new employees
The first 90 days is when most attrition risk is established. These questions are worth running as a standalone onboarding survey at the 30, 60, and 90-day marks.
61. How well did your onboarding prepare you to do your job effectively?
A direct test of whether the onboarding process is actually useful, not just thorough.
62. How quickly did you feel like a genuine part of the team?
Belonging in the early weeks is a strong predictor of long-term retention.
63. How clearly do you understand what success looks like in your role?
Expectation clarity in the first 90 days has an outsized impact on early performance and confidence.
64. How well does the reality of this role match what you were told in the hiring process?
Surfaces misalignment between recruitment and reality — which is one of the most common early exit drivers.
65. What’s one thing you wish someone had told you before your first week?
Open-ended, specific, and almost always surfaces something genuinely useful.
66. How easy is it to find the information and tools you need to do your job?
Practical operational readiness — often overlooked in favour of cultural onboarding.
67. How supported did you feel by your manager in your first month?
Early manager quality has a disproportionate effect on whether new hires stay past the first year.
eNPS and recommendation questions
The eNPS question is the single most widely tracked engagement metric. It’s most useful as a trend over time, not as a one-time snapshot.
68. How likely is it you would recommend this company as a place to work to a friend or colleague? (1 = would not recommend, 5 = would definitely recommend)
The standard eNPS question, adapted for a 1–5 scale. Keep the wording identical every time you ask it so trends are meaningful.
69. What’s the single most important thing the company would need to change for you to raise your score?
An open-ended follow-up that makes the eNPS score actionable rather than just a number to track.
70. How likely are you to recommend this company’s products or services to someone you know?
A customer NPS proxy — useful for companies where employee and customer advocacy are closely linked.
Open-ended questions that surface what you didn’t know to ask
These are the questions that generate the responses HR teams read out loud in leadership meetings. They’re also the ones that require the most trust in the anonymity of the survey — which is why they work best when anonymity has been clearly established through the rating scale questions that precede them.
71. What’s one thing about working here that you genuinely love and hope never changes?
A positive anchor — surfaces what’s worth protecting before asking about what needs fixing.
72. What’s one thing about working here that you would change if you could?
The classic open-ended improvement question. Simple, direct, and almost always produces useful responses.
73. What’s something this company does that surprises you compared to other places you’ve worked?
Surfaces differentiators — both positive and negative — that internal teams have become blind to.
74. Is there anything you’ve been wanting to raise but haven’t found the right moment to say?
The most important question on this list. It’s also the one most surveys never ask. It invites the things people have been carrying but holding back — which is exactly what an anonymous survey is for.
75. What would make you feel prouder to tell people where you work?
Frames the employer brand question from the inside out — what do employees wish they could say about this place?
How many questions to ask, and when
The most common mistake in employee surveys isn’t asking the wrong questions. It’s asking too many of them.
A survey with more than ten questions will see a meaningful drop in completion rate. A survey with more than twenty will see response quality decline — people start skipping open-ended questions or answering them with one word. The annual 60-question engagement census that takes 25 minutes to complete and gets 40% participation is less useful than a focused six-question pulse survey with 85% participation.
For a quarterly pulse survey: pick three to five rating scale questions from the categories most relevant to what’s happening in your company right now, plus one open-ended question. Keep it under ten minutes. Run it in Slack so people can respond without context-switching.
For a specific-topic survey (management quality, onboarding, return from parental leave): draw from the relevant category in this list and limit to eight to twelve questions. Send it to the relevant subset of your team rather than everyone.
For an annual deeper survey: combine questions from four or five categories, limit to twenty questions maximum, and make at least two of them open-ended. The annual survey is where you look at trends across a full year — it shouldn’t try to replace the regular pulse data you should already have.
The categories worth running most regularly, in order of predictive value for the things most companies care about (retention, performance, culture health): engagement, management, wellbeing, and growth. Inclusion and culture questions matter enormously but shift more slowly — quarterly or semi-annual is sufficient unless you’ve made a major change that warrants a check-in.
Running anonymous feedback in Karma
Karma’s feedback feature lives in Slack — you compose your questions (rating scales and open-ended), select recipients, and send when your team is ready for a check-in or schedule them automatically. Every response is fully anonymous, stated clearly in the survey so respondents know it before they answer.
We made an option to send out surveys are manually as well as scheduled. That’s intentional: we think that the best pulse surveys are sent when something specific has happened that warrants a check-in — not because a calendar said it’s been 30 days. When you’re ready, the questions in this list are ready to use.
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