Crafting Questions for Meaningful Employee Surveys

STOP asking overused questions like... “What’s the culture like here?” You already know the answer. It’s vague. It’s rehearsed. It tells you nothing. Culture is NOT a mission statement. It’s how people behave when no one's watching. Ask the questions that make people pause and actually reflect. The ones that reveal what it’s really like to work there. Try these INSTEAD: 1. "What kind of behaviour gets rewarded here — and what quietly gets people sidelined?" 2. "When was the last time someone challenged leadership here — and how did that go?" 3. "If I asked someone who left recently why they did, what would they say?" 4. "What’s something people complain about internally but leadership hasn’t addressed yet?" 5. "What’s one thing you’d change about the culture — if you had a magic wand?" 6. "Tell me about a time someone failed here — how did the team respond?" 7. "How do decisions really get made around here — in meetings, or behind the scenes?" 8. "Can you name someone who’s truly thriving here — and why?" 9. "Who tends to leave, and what pattern do you see in their reasons?" 10. "How does the organisation unlearn things that no longer serve it?" 11. "How safe is it to say “I don’t know” or “I need help” around here?" 12. "What’s the biggest tension the leadership team is wrestling with right now?" 13. "Tell me a story that would never make it into your recruitment brochure. 14. "What’s an unwritten rule here that newcomers usually discover the hard way?" 15 "If the company disappeared tomorrow, what would your employees actually miss?" Bonus question: “What story best illustrates who you really are as a company?” Don’t just listen to answers. Watch how people react to the questions. And if these questions make your interviewer uncomfortable? You’ve learned a lot right there. Your interview experience is culture in action. Were they transparent? Did they show respect for your time and energy? Did they challenge you — and welcome being challenged? Culture is not what they say. It’s what they do. Especially when you’re not yet one of them. Do the work. Ask better questions. Reshare to help others raise the bar too. ♻ #culturematters #hiring #aviation

I’ve spent 10+ years as a manager. And many of those years as a bad one. I’ve not always asked the right questions to become a good manager. To get honest feedback and the best performance from those I manage. Here are some of the best questions I've picked up over the years. ✅ For Understanding Team Dynamics 1. What more can I do to support you in your role? 2. How do you prefer to receive feedback? 3. What motivates you most in your work? How do you feel about the current team dynamic? 4. Are there any conflicts or issues within the team that I should be aware of? ✅ For Improving Processes 5. What are the biggest challenges you’re facing in your current projects? 6. Are there any tools or resources you need to be more effective? 7. How can we improve our current processes or workflows? 8. What’s one thing you would change about how we do things? ✅ For Career Development 9. What are your career goals, and how can I help you achieve them? 10. Are there any skills or areas you’d like to develop further? 11. What training or development opportunities would you find beneficial? 12. What would you like to achive in the next year? 13. Are there any mentors within the organization you’d like me to help you connect with? ✅ For Gauging Satisfaction and Engagement 14. How do you feel about your current workload and responsibilities? 15. What aspects of your job do you enjoy the most? The least? 16. Do you feel your contributions are recognized and valued? 17. Is there anything about your job that frustrates or demotivates you? 18. Do you feel the company’s values align with your own? ✅ For Feedback on Your Management 19. What can I do to be a better manager for you? 20. Are there any decisions or actions of mine that have negatively impacted you or the team? 21. How can I improve our communication? 22. Do you feel comfortable coming to me with issues or concerns? ✅ For Checking In On Well-Being 23. How are you managing your work-life balance? 24. Is there anything we can do to reduce stress or improve your well-being? 25. How do you feel about the support you receive from the team and me? Are there any you'd add to this? -- 📌Looking to grow? Follow Tom Pestridge for more posts like this.

Want to supercharge your employee engagement strategy? Start by asking the right questions. As leaders, we often focus on metrics and results, but the true pulse of our organizations lies in the voices of our employees. Here are five powerful questions to ignite conversations that foster connection and drive meaningful engagement: ✅ What inspires you in your work? Understanding what motivates your team members can help align their passions with organizational goals, creating a sense of purpose that drives performance. ✅ How do you prefer to collaborate? Everyone has different communication styles and preferences. By discovering how your team likes to work together, you can create a more inclusive and effective environment. ✅ What obstacles do you face in your role? Encouraging openness about challenges shows your employees that you value their experiences. Identifying these barriers can lead to solutions that enhance productivity and morale. ✅ What skills would you like to develop? Investing in your team’s growth not only benefits them but also strengthens your organization. When employees feel supported in their professional development, their engagement skyrockets. ✅ How can we celebrate your achievements? Recognition is key to engagement. Understanding how your employees want to be acknowledged can help foster a culture of appreciation that motivates and retains top talent. At CraftCulture, we believe that asking these questions is just the beginning. It’s about actively listening and taking action based on the feedback you receive. When employees feel heard and valued, they become more invested in their work and the organization as a whole. Let’s not just check the box on engagement—let’s create a culture where everyone feels empowered to contribute and thrive. If you’re ready to elevate your employee engagement strategy, let’s chat! Together, we can craft experiences that truly resonate with your team.

Nonprofit friends, planning to collect data soon? Remember: Your questions shape your data—but they don’t always get you what you need. Imagine this: You are filling out a border form, and it asks: "Do you exceed duty-free allowances per person?" The only answers are Yes or No. For someone who didn't bring any goods, selecting No implies they did get something but stayed within the limit. The question doesn't account for people for whom the question is irrelevant, forcing them to provide inaccurate information. Now think about your data collection tools (say, your last survey): ● Are your questions boxing people into answers that don't reflect their reality? ● Are you assuming experiences that don't apply to everyone? ● Are you unintentionally excluding voices by limiting response options? Poorly worded questions = bad data = flawed decisions = a loss of trust. Here are three examples of common pitfalls: ● Assumptions baked into questions Example: “What barriers prevent you from attending our events?” assumes the respondent knows about your events and faces barriers. A better question: “Have you heard of our events?” followed by, “What barriers, if any, prevent you from attending?” ● Excluding relevant options Example: “Which of these programs have you used?” but leaving out “I haven’t used any.” Guess what happens? People pick a random answer or leave it blank, and now your data is a mess. ● Vague questions Example: “On a scale of 1-5, how satisfied are you with our communication?” Without specifying—emails? Social media? In-person?—responses will be all over the place. Your questions are your bridge to listening and understanding. Two things to remember here (and by no means this is the complete list): ● Plan your survey – the why, what, how, when, what-next… before jumping to design ● Use inclusive language, providing options like "Does not apply.", wherever relevant. Ensuring people responding to it can see themselves in the questions and responses is the only way to give them the true choice of what and how much they want to share with us. Please reach out if you want to plan a Survey Kaleidoscope workshop with your team on your upcoming survey (for context, it's a workshop where we solely plan the survey collectively - every single element of how to ensure a successful survey happens) #nonprofits #nonprofitleadership #community

Most HR teams ask the wrong questions in their quarterly reviews. Here's 30 questions that actually move the needle: ORGANIZATIONAL HEALTH 1. What are our top three people risks this quarter? 2. Where are decisions getting stuck? 3. Which values are being ignored in practice? 4. What would we be embarrassing for a new hire to see? 5. What behaviors are being rewarded that shouldn't be? TALENT & MOBILITY 6. Who are our top 10 internal flight risks? 7. Who has outgrown their role but hasn't moved? 8. What skills are missing for our next stage of growth? 9. How many roles could be filled internally but weren't? 10. Who's one level below leadership...and ready? ENGAGEMENT & RETENTION 11. What's the real reason people are staying or leaving? 12. Where is burnout quietly building? 13. Which teams feel undervalued despite strong performance? 14. What percentage of managers haven't done a 1:1 in 30 days? 15. Which teams are really engaged with their work? INCLUSION & CULTURE 16. Which employees feel invisible right now? 17. Where is psychological safety lowest? 18. How often are voices interrupted in meetings? 19. What does fairness look like to employees here? 20. Are we confusing "culture fit" with "comfort zone"? PERFORMANCE & FEEDBACK 21. Which roles lack clear success metrics? 22. Are people clear on how they're measured? 23. How many performance reviews focused on growth, not just ratings? 24. Which teams are coasting due to lack of accountability? 25. Where is feedback happening too late to help? LEADERSHIP & TRUST 26. Which leaders are avoiding hard conversations? 27. Who's getting promoted but not prepared? 28. What signals are execs sending that erode trust? 29. Where do we need to lead more visibly? 30. How would employees describe "leadership" here in one word? TAKEAWAY: Most quarterly HR reviews focus on metrics and compliance. But the companies with the strongest cultures ask the uncomfortable questions. They dig into the gaps between what they say they value and what they actually reward. They identify problems before they become crises. They treat culture as a competitive advantage, not a checkbox. P.S. Which of these 30 questions would be most uncomfortable for your organization to answer honestly? That's probably where you should start.

A few years ago, I tried to convince a CEO we should run an employee survey. He looked at me and said, “Why? So we can create a colorful PowerPoint about feelings and then do absolutely nothing with it?” Honestly… fair. He’d seen the movie before: -100+ questions -Good participation -Beautiful charts -Zero change -Collective employee eye-roll At the time, I was determined to prove a survey could be more than a corporate ritual we perform between budgeting season and the holiday party. Here’s what I learned: An employee survey isn’t about asking questions. It’s about deciding what you’re actually willing to hear. And what you’re willing to do about it. Our first draft survey was… ambitious. We asked everything. Engagement. Benefits. Leadership trust. Office snacks. Probably the emotional impact of the expense policy. It was thoughtful. It was thorough. It was also completely unfocused. The CEO asked me one question that changed everything: “What decision will this data help us make?” Silence. We weren’t clear on what we really wanted to learn. We were going through the motions because “good companies run surveys.” So we scrapped it and started over. Instead of starting with questions, we started with intent: -Where are we guessing instead of knowing? -What’s getting in the way of great work? -What are we actually prepared to fix? -What might surprise us? We cut the survey nearly in half. We removed vague questions like, “Do you feel valued?” (valued… by whom? For what?) We replaced them with sharper ones: -What’s one process that makes your job harder than it needs to be? -What does leadership think is working well - but isn’t? -If you could change one thing in the next 90 days, what would it be? The difference was immediate. Participation went up. Comments got specific. Patterns were clear. Within 60 days, we eliminated a clunky approval process, clarified decision rights, and fixed a communication gap that had been frustrating half the company. Nothing revolutionary. Just listening - and acting. And that’s what changed the CEO’s mind. Employees don’t expect perfection. They expect evidence that their input matters. What I took away from that experience: -Don’t ask a question you’re not prepared to act on. -Fewer, sharper questions beat longer, safer surveys. -Specific beats sentimental. -The real work starts after the results come in. -Over-surveying is annoying. Under-listening is fatal. Now, whenever someone says, “We should run a survey,” my first question is: “To learn what?” Because the power isn’t in the form. It’s in the intention behind it. Sometimes tweaking just a few questions doesn’t just change the data. It changes the conversation.

A good survey works like a therapy session. You don’t begin by asking for deep truths, you guide the person gently through context, emotion, and interpretation. When done in the right sequence, your questions help people articulate thoughts they didn’t even realize they had. Most UX surveys fall short not because users hold back, but because the design doesn’t help them get there. They capture behavior and preferences but often miss the emotional drivers, unmet expectations, and mental models behind them. In cognitive psychology, we understand that thoughts and feelings exist at different levels. Some answers come automatically, while others require reflection and reconstruction. If a survey jumps straight to asking why someone was frustrated, without first helping them recall the situation or how it felt, it skips essential cognitive steps. This often leads to vague or inconsistent data. When I design surveys, I use a layered approach grounded in models like Levels of Processing, schema activation, and emotional salience. It starts with simple, context-setting questions like “Which feature did you use most recently?” or “How often do you use this tool in a typical week?” These may seem basic, but they activate memory networks and help situate the participant in the experience. Visual prompts or brief scenarios can support this further. Once context is active, I move into emotional or evaluative questions (still gently) asking things like “How confident did you feel?” or “Was anything more difficult than expected?” These help surface emotional traces tied to memory. Using sliders or response ranges allows participants to express subtle variations in emotional intensity, which matters because emotion often turns small usability issues into lasting negative impressions. After emotional recall, we move into the interpretive layer, where users start making sense of what happened and why. I ask questions like “What did you expect to happen next?” or “Did the interface behave the way you assumed it would?” to uncover the mental models guiding their decisions. At this stage, responses become more thoughtful and reflective. While we sometimes use AI-powered sentiment analysis to identify patterns in open-ended responses, the real value comes from the survey’s structure, not the tool. Only after guiding users through context, emotion, and interpretation do we include satisfaction ratings, prioritization tasks, or broader reflections. When asked too early, these tend to produce vague answers. But after a structured cognitive journey, feedback becomes far more specific, grounded, and actionable. Adaptive paths or click-to-highlight elements often help deepen this final stage. So, if your survey results feel vague, the issue may lie in the pacing and flow of your questions. A great survey doesn’t just ask, it leads. And when done right, it can uncover insights as rich as any interview. *I’ve shared an example structure in the comment section.

"How to Craft Qualitative Research Questions 1. Purpose-Driven Ensures that questions align with the study’s objective and explore experiences deeply. 🔹 Example: If researching mental health in university students, a purpose-driven question might be: ➡️ "How do university students perceive the impact of academic pressure on their mental well-being?" (This aligns with the study’s purpose of understanding student experiences.) 2. Open-Ended Encourages in-depth responses, avoiding simple "yes" or "no" answers. 🔹 Example: Instead of asking: ❌ "Do you think social media affects self-esteem?" (Yes/No answer) ✅ Ask: "In what ways does social media influence your self-esteem?" (This allows participants to elaborate.) 3. Exploratory Focuses on understanding experiences, behaviors, and perceptions rather than measuring statistics. 🔹 Example: If studying remote work culture, an exploratory question might be: ➡️ "How do employees experience work-life balance while working remotely?" (This explores perceptions rather than giving a numerical result.) 4. Contextual Embeds the question within specific cultural or situational settings to gain deeper insights. 🔹 Example: If studying women’s empowerment in rural areas, a contextual question could be: ➡️ "How do cultural norms influence women's participation in entrepreneurship in rural Pakistan?" (This considers the specific cultural setting rather than generalizing.)

I've worked on SEVEN reports this year. I normally ask you all "is that too many? Is that very few?" but for this one, I have my answer. It's a lot. But a lot of briefs skip out this ONE thing: No survey strategist. No strategic input for category, quality, or order of the questions. No answers to the question "why are we asking what we are asking?" And that leaves it to the report creator(me) to "find" a POV after the responses are already in. This is much harder to do than if we go in with a mission. Unbiased, but directional. For example, you could be asking "Have you received a promotion in the last year?" to learn how promotions correspond with salary increases. But how does this question fit into the bigger story? If you can't answer that, you have a floating fact, at best and wasted respondent time, at worst. A survey strategist would frame a series of questions that explore the bigger story of career progression. They might ask: 👉 “Have you received a promotion in the last year?” (that’s your baseline, your starting point for career movement) 👉 “Did this promotion come with a salary increase?” (now you’re tying that movement to financial impact) 👉 “How did the promotion affect your job satisfaction?” (the emotional weight of advancement) 👉 “How do you perceive your growth opportunities within the company?” ( here, you’re getting at the big picture: loyalty, ambition, future potential) They'll understand the question logic, how an analyst would layer the responses, and what the designer would need to tell the story via graphs. Survey design doesn't need to be expensive. You can do it in-house and get a research report creator (me, Becky Lawlor) to sanity-check the questions, refine the flow, and tie them back to a clear narrative. It'll save you time, money, and peace of mind down the line. If this is something you're thinking about, send me a note! 📩

“How was school?” “Good.” “How was your day?” “Good.” Anyone else try having a conversation with their kids and get these one-word answers? In defense of kids — it’s not their fault. Those questions are *terrible*. You get responses at the level of the questions you ask. Ask great questions, get great data. Ask lazy ones… you get “good.” (And okay, I have a middle schooler — so “sometimes” you get great data :) Over time, I’ve become a Jedi at asking questions my kids can’t brush off: 🗣️ “Tell me the most interesting thing you’ve learned in math lately.” 🗣️ “What happened between you and ___ today?” When I became more intentional about how I asked, they became more open. They saw I *wanted* to listen. And that’s the same principle in research and customer insights. When we send out surveys packed with 10 nominal features, rating scales, and matrix grids… Do we sound like we *really* want to listen? No. When we ask, “How likely are you to adopt?” Is that enough to *really* know their intent? No again. Try questions that uncover the why behind behavior: 👉 “How are you solving this problem today?” 👉 “What’s the hardest part of using your current system?” That’s where the real insight lives. If you’re building surveys, questionnaires, or interview guides, take the time to: ✅ Mix open and closed questions ✅ Be clear on what you want to learn ✅ Review them critically — do they invite honesty or quick clicks? You get out of your research the same thoughtfulness you put into your questions. Ask better. Listen deeper. Get real answers. P.S. How great was this post? (Terrible question. See my point?) #marketresearch #customerinsights #surveydesign #edtech #leadership #intentionality