Employee survey questionnaire: principles and topic areas
A good questionnaire makes it easy for employees to share their experiences honestly – and gives you results you can act on. Clear questions, an appropriate length and a framework that builds trust are key. The guidance below will help you structure your questionnaire and choose suitable topics.
Table of Contents
Key principles for your questionnaire
- Protect anonymity from the outset: Only ask for characteristics that are genuinely needed for your analysis. Also consider whether a combination of several details could make individual employees identifiable.
- Communicate the purpose and process clearly: Explain why you are running the employee survey, how the results will be used and what will happen next. Also communicate the measures that protect anonymity.
- Avoid mandatory questions where possible: The questionnaire should still be analysable when individual questions are left unanswered. Mandatory questions can reduce willingness to take part.
- Make participation straightforward: A clear, professional layout makes the questionnaire easier to complete. The right survey tool should allow design customisation without requiring IT skills.
Use question types and features thoughtfully
- Allow open responses
Where individual feedback is useful, complement multiple-choice questions with a field for a respondent’s own answer or comment. This gives employees room to raise issues that predefined answer options do not cover.
- Keep the questionnaire focused
Not every question is relevant to every employee. Use branching or visibility settings to show only the questions that apply. This reduces each person’s completion time without omitting important topics.
- Use dynamic content
Dynamic content lets you survey different employee groups with one questionnaire. Depending on their role or department, participants see the questions and pages that are relevant to them. The results remain together in one employee survey and can be compared easily.
- Use attributes selectively
Attributes can help you analyse results in more detail and guide participants through suitable survey paths. Use them only where they fit your purpose and still support anonymous analysis.
Questions: scope and topic areas
Focus on questions that fit your objective and can lead to concrete action. A short, well-structured survey is more likely to be completed than a questionnaire with many similar questions or questions that are irrelevant to particular groups.
Tip: Here you will find templates for employee survey questions and questionnaires.
The right topics depend on your organisation and the purpose of the survey. Common topic areas include:
- Leadership and collaboration
- Goals and direction
- Training and personal development
- Communication and the flow of information
- Involvement in improving working processes
- Customer focus
- Job satisfaction and working conditions
- The organisation’s social responsibility
- Transparency about the organisation’s results, progress and development
- Read on: Common employee survey questions and question categories
What is LamaPoll?
LamaPoll is a survey tool for creating employee surveys and measuring employee satisfaction. You can use it to create, conduct and analyse all types of employee survey. Create your employee survey in just a few steps, apply your organisation’s corporate design and invite employees conveniently by email or via your intranet. You can quickly gain insights that help improve employee satisfaction. You can register for our survey tool free of charge and immediately conduct surveys for up to 50 employees with no obligation. If you need more responses to your online employee survey questionnaire, simply choose one of our monthly plans. You can also use our employee survey questionnaire templates and examples.
