View/Export Results
Manage Existing Surveys
Create/Copy Multiple Surveys
Collaborate with Team Members

OR

Sign inSign in with Facebook

Sign inSign in with Google

Employee Engagement Survey Template

A 20-question employee engagement survey you can send today: five measure engagement, twelve explain it, one asks how likely people are to recommend the place, and two are in your people's own words. Take it here, copy the questions, or open it in the editor.

20questions
5 to 6 minto complete
5-pointagree scale + one 0 to 10
Anonymousby default

Use this template Take the survey first

Employee Engagement Survey · answer to move through it

Use this template

Question 1 of 20 Engagement

My work gives me a sense of accomplishment.

1

2

3

4

5

Strongly disagreeStrongly agree

Question 2 of 20 Engagement

Most days, I am glad to be doing this job.

1

2

3

4

5

Strongly disagreeStrongly agree

Question 3 of 20 Engagement

I care about the future of this organization.

1

2

3

4

5

Strongly disagreeStrongly agree

Question 4 of 20 Engagement

This organization brings out my best work.

1

2

3

4

5

Strongly disagreeStrongly agree

Question 5 of 20 Engagement

I see myself still working here in two years.

1

2

3

4

5

Strongly disagreeStrongly agree

Question 6 of 20 Manager

My manager gives me feedback that helps me improve.

1

2

3

4

5

Strongly disagreeStrongly agree

Question 7 of 20 Manager

My manager treats people fairly.

1

2

3

4

5

Strongly disagreeStrongly agree

Question 8 of 20 Growth

I can see a path to develop my skills or career here.

1

2

3

4

5

Strongly disagreeStrongly agree

Question 9 of 20 Growth

I get the training I need to do my job well.

1

2

3

4

5

Strongly disagreeStrongly agree

Question 10 of 20 Recognition and voice

When I do good work, it gets noticed.

1

2

3

4

5

Strongly disagreeStrongly agree

Question 11 of 20 Recognition and voice

My ideas and concerns are listened to.

1

2

3

4

5

Strongly disagreeStrongly agree

Question 12 of 20 Workload and wellbeing

My workload is manageable.

1

2

3

4

5

Strongly disagreeStrongly agree

Question 13 of 20 Workload and wellbeing

I can switch off from work at the end of the day.

1

2

3

4

5

Strongly disagreeStrongly agree

Question 14 of 20 Purpose and leadership

I understand how my work contributes to the organization's goals.

1

2

3

4

5

Strongly disagreeStrongly agree

Question 15 of 20 Purpose and leadership

Senior leaders communicate a clear direction.

1

2

3

4

5

Strongly disagreeStrongly agree

Question 16 of 20 Belonging and fairness

I can be myself at work.

1

2

3

4

5

Strongly disagreeStrongly agree

Question 17 of 20 Belonging and fairness

People here are treated with respect, whoever they are.

1

2

3

4

5

Strongly disagreeStrongly agree

Question 18 of 20 Your words

What is the one thing that would most improve your experience at work?

Question 19 of 20 Your words

What should we make sure we keep doing?

Question 20 of 20 Recommend

How likely are you to recommend this organization as a place to work to a friend?

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Not at all likelyExtremely likely

What this employee engagement survey measures

Most engagement surveys mix the outcome and its causes into one long list. This template keeps them apart: five questions produce the engagement index, twelve explain it.

The index. Five statements about the work itself: accomplishment, being glad to do the job, caring about the future, the place bringing out your best work, and intent to stay. Their average percent favourable is your engagement score, deliberately free of anything the organization does for people.

The drivers. Six pairs of questions cover the conditions the public engagement instruments keep finding behind the score.[1] They are manager, growth, recognition and voice, workload and wellbeing, purpose and leadership, belonging and fairness. Two questions per driver is the minimum that lets a team-level number mean something.

The recommend question and two open answers. It gives a second, comparable number. The open answers give the sentence that explains the chart. Every question uses the same 5-point agree scale, worded positively.[8] Reversed items lower reliability more than they reduce yes-saying, so the balance comes from the open questions and the recommend question instead.[9] That item is the eNPS question, which Bain publishes as the employee half of the net promoter system,[14] and the employee net promoter score template covers how to score it and what the published benchmarks are worth.

If what you want to know is whether people are content with the pay, the hours and the manager, rather than how much of themselves they bring, that is a different instrument: the employee satisfaction survey asks those questions.

Every question below is already built in the survey creator; change the wording, drop a driver, or add your own before you send it.

Five driver bars feeding one engagement gauge, with a survey card beneath — Drivers on the left, the index on the right. Report the index as the score, the drivers as the reasons.

The 20 employee engagement survey questions

Every question, its scale, and what a low score is telling you. Copy a block, or the whole set, and skip the retyping.

Plain text, one question per line, with the answer scale.

Engagement index (the outcome)

These five questions are the score. Average their percent favourable for your index.

My work gives me a sense of accomplishment.5-point agree modelled on FEVSThe strongest single item in the public indexes.
Most days, I am glad to be doing this job.5-point agreeDay-to-day energy; low here points at workload or the manager.
I care about the future of this organization.5-point agree modelled on the UK Civil Service indexCommitment to the place, not just the job.
This organization brings out my best work.5-point agree modelled on the UK Civil Service indexWhether the place lifts the work or just houses it.
I see myself still working here in two years.5-point agreeIntent to stay; your earliest turnover warning.

Manager

Enough to tell whether a low team score is about the manager or the work.

My manager gives me feedback that helps me improve.5-point agreeFeedback quality, not frequency.
My manager treats people fairly.5-point agree modelled on FEVSFairness, usually the driver with the widest gap.

Growth

Path and training fail for different reasons, so ask both.

I can see a path to develop my skills or career here.5-point agreeCareer visibility; low scores in years two to four predict attrition.
I get the training I need to do my job well.5-point agreeWhether the job is set up to be done well.

Recognition and voice

The cheapest drivers to fix and the most often ignored.

When I do good work, it gets noticed.5-point agreeA manager can fix this in a week.
My ideas and concerns are listened to.5-point agree modelled on FEVSIf this is low, expect blunt open answers.

Workload and wellbeing

Two plain questions do the job of a burnout scale without the licensing problems of one.

My workload is manageable.5-point agreeSustainable pace right now.
I can switch off from work at the end of the day.5-point agreeRecovery; a better predictor of burnout than hours worked.

Purpose and leadership

Line of sight to the goals, and whether leaders say where the organization is going.

I understand how my work contributes to the organization's goals.5-point agree modelled on FEVSHigher in small organizations, lower after a reorg.
Senior leaders communicate a clear direction.5-point agree modelled on FEVSThe leadership item most tied to the index in public data.

Belonging and fairness

Whether people can be themselves and expect the same treatment as everyone else.

I can be myself at work.5-point agreePsychological safety in one sentence.
People here are treated with respect, whoever they are.5-point agreeFair treatment across the organization.

Your words and the recommend question

Two open answers sit before the end, so people still have a reason to type. The survey closes on a rating scale, the ending that loses the fewest answers.

What is the one thing that would most improve your experience at work?Open text, optionalGets the most usable answers of any open prompt.
What should we make sure we keep doing?Open text, optionalStops leaders removing what already works.
How likely are you to recommend this organization as a place to work to a friend?0 to 10Percent 9 to 10 minus percent 0 to 6.

The pay question, and why it is not here. HR teams drop "I am paid fairly" because the answer is always low and rarely actionable, and employees read the omission as avoidance. If you can act on pay this year, add it to Belonging and fairness; if not, say pay is reviewed separately.

How to score it and what a good result looks like

Three numbers, all computed from the same responses, each answering a different question.

Measure	How to calculate it	Reference points	What it answers
Engagement index	Percent choosing agree or strongly agree on each index question, averaged.	U.S. federal index 73%, UK Civil Service 65%[1][5]	How engaged are we, and is it moving?
Driver scores	Percent favourable per driver pair, then compare the index of people who agreed against those who did not: the biggest gap is your lever.	Manager and growth usually score lowest	What to work on first?
Recommend question	Percent scoring 9-10 minus percent scoring 0-6.	Read it as a trend on your own number	Would people vouch for us?
Open answers	Read once, tag each with one driver, count the tags, quote a few verbatim.	About 57% of people write something[4]	What is the sentence behind the chart?

On benchmarks. Your own trend across two runs tells you more than any published number. For the teams at the bottom, the employee morale survey is the closer read.

The driver-gap method, in one example. Suppose 70 percent of people who agree their manager treats people fairly are engaged on the index. Among people who disagree, only 31 percent are. That 39-point gap beats any other driver's, so fairness is the lever, even if its favourable score is not the lowest. It is a two-column pivot in a spreadsheet.

How to run an employee engagement survey in five steps

Five decisions that belong to an engagement survey and to nothing else. The mechanics every survey shares, one link, one reminder, a stated length, a closing date, are in the survey research guide.

Pick a survey owner who manages nobody answering it
The owner can open every response as a row, so name someone outside the reporting line of everyone answering, and print that name in the invitation.
Freeze the 20 questions before the first send
Any wording change after the first run breaks the trend. Drop a driver as a pair, keep the five index questions as written, and log every edit.
Choose a quiet fortnight, starting on a Monday
Pick two weeks clear of pay announcements, restructures and redundancy news, and use the same window next year. Monday sends collected 13 percent more responses than average.[10]
Aim for 70 to 80 percent, not 100
Recurring surveys on one large platform average 75 percent; national civil-service censuses get 41 to 59.[4][5] A perfect score means people felt watched.[16]
Below 50 percent, fix trust first.
Hand managers the driver gaps, never the rows
Each manager gets the team index and driver scores where five or more answered, the two widest gaps, and open answers as counted themes, never rows.

Anonymity: what you can honestly promise a team of your size

Anonymity is a property of how you report, not how you collect: the form can be anonymous and the results still identify people if groups are small. Thirty-seven percent of employees already doubt these surveys are anonymous.[7]

Team or group size	What you can promise	What to change
Under 15 people	Confidentiality, not anonymity. Style alone can identify who wrote what.	Drop every demographic question. Report one level up, and theme open answers before anyone sees them.
15 to 50 people	Anonymity for scale questions if you report only groups of five or more.	One demographic cut at most (team or tenure, not both). Never cross two cuts.
50 and up	Standard anonymity, minimum group of five; use ten for comments.	Suppress any cell under five and the next-smallest cell too, and publish the rule in the survey intro.

Should every question be required? Barely. Matched inside question-count bands, requiring every answer is worth +0.4 points of completion, and a survey where every question is optional still completes at 80.8% (4,365 surveys).[3] People answer 95% of required questions anyway, and a form that will not let someone skip a question about their manager does not feel anonymous. Require the recommend question at the end and leave the rest optional. For feedback on one manager rather than the whole company, the manager effectiveness survey is the single-rater version.

State two rules in the survey intro: a team below the threshold rolls up to the next leader, and nobody gets a personal link.

Five is the default reporting threshold in major enterprise platforms; below it a manager who knows the team can read individual answers off a chart.[12] On a survey of twelve, team, tenure and role alone can identify someone.[13]

Confidentiality statement for the survey intro

How your answers are handled

This survey asks for no name or email. Only the survey owner, who is not your manager, can see the individual answers, and results are reported for groups of five or more.
Results are reported only for groups of five or more people. Smaller groups are combined with a neighbouring team or shown at the next level up.
Written comments are read by [NAME] only, grouped into themes, and shared as themes. Comments are never shown alongside team or role information.
Raw data is deleted [90 days] after the survey closes.

If you cannot keep the promise, do not make it. A survey that says "anonymous" and then reports a team of four has ended its own future. Call it confidential, name who sees the raw data, and people will still answer.

From results to action in 30 days

The survey is the cheap part. Only about one in three employees believe their organization will act on feedback, and that belief is what lowers the next response rate.[6]

Week one: share everything, then pick two things. Send the index, all six drivers, the recommend question result and the themed comments to every employee, not a summary to managers. Use the driver-gap method above to pick the one or two drivers with the biggest gap between engaged and disengaged people. Two is the most anyone will believe you are working on. If intent to stay is the lowest driver, the employee retention survey questions are what to run next.

Weeks two to four: one conversation per team, then say it out loud. Every manager runs a 30-minute discussion with one question: what would move this driver here? Each leaves with one action, one owner and one date. Announce each change with the survey theme that prompted it.

Measure again in three months with a short pulse, not the whole survey. Duplicate it in the survey creator with just the two drivers you are tracking. The employee pulse survey template is built for exactly that.

A loop of four icons: survey card, results chart, conversation, and a checklist — Survey, results, conversation, action, and back to the survey. Conversation is the step most organizations skip.

Employee engagement survey FAQ

What is the difference between an engagement survey and a satisfaction survey?

Satisfaction asks whether people are content with what they get: pay, hours, tools, perks. Engagement asks whether they bring energy and commitment and would stay. Someone can be satisfied and disengaged, or engaged and dissatisfied. This template measures engagement and treats satisfaction items as drivers.

How often should we run it?

Run the full 20 questions once or twice a year, with identical wording. Use a short pulse between runs on the drivers you are working on. Sending a second survey too soon after the first costs response: one randomised study found a ten-point drop.[11]

What is a good engagement score?

Public indexes that publish their method land at 65% to 73% favourable. Treat those as orientation, not a target. Your own trend across two runs tells you more, because benchmarks pool very different organizations.

Can we use Gallup Q12 questions instead?

Not without permission. Gallup states that you may not administer a survey with the Q12 items or reproduce them without its written consent. Several other well-known scales are academic-only or paid. Every question in this template is original or adapted from public-domain and openly licensed government instruments.

How much does an employee engagement survey cost?

The survey itself is free to build and send from this template. Paid survey platforms charge per employee per year, and what the money buys is benchmarks and dashboards rather than better questions. The real cost is the time to read the open answers and act on one thing, so budget manager hours before you budget for software.

Feeling recognised is one driver among several here, measured at one item. When that item is the one moving, the employee recognition survey opens it into a set that separates being noticed from being rewarded.

Engagement is measured across an organisation and read as a population. A team of six is not a population, and the team survey asks instead whether that particular group gets work through itself.

Engagement is read across an organisation over time. One recognition scheme is narrower and easier to change, so the employee of the month survey asks whether it is understood, fair and worth continuing.

Engagement asks how people feel about working here. Reps know something narrower and more actionable, which is where the plan meets the customer, and the sales team survey asks about that.

Methods and sources

Survey methodology and questionnaire design, SuperSurvey

Survey methodologist and editor since 2003: wording, response scales, reliability checks, reporting that maps to a decision.

Every question written for this page; Gallup Q12, UWES and MBI items checked for and absent

Updated 4 September 2026 · How templates are reviewed

What this template is based on

Questions map to the factor structure of FEVS, the UK People Survey and COPSOQ III, but no item is taken from COPSOQ or named as one; send-plan numbers use the SuperSurvey Response Benchmark.[3]

Question licensing

Nothing licensed appears: Gallup Q12 needs written consent, UWES is academic-use only, the MBI is paid. FEVS is public domain and UK People Survey items are OGL v3.0. COPSOQ III is CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, and its network permits commercial use as long as no fee is charged for the questionnaire itself; a modified item may not be called COPSOQ, and none here is.[2][15][1][5]

Limits and disclosure

Our benchmark counts survey openers, so participation ranges come from published norms; the reference points are public indexes and vendor benchmarks, not a validated norm for your organization.

SuperSurvey makes the editor this template opens in; everything here is free with or without it.

References

U.S. Office of Personnel Management. 2024 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey Technical Report. OPM, 2024. opm.gov (PDF)
Gallup. Q12 question summary. Gallup Workplace. gallup.com
SuperSurvey Response Benchmark, 16 September 2023 to 25 August 2026: 25,112 analysed surveys with 998,864 completed responses, out of 2,274,520 responses platform-wide. Method note.
Microsoft Viva Glint. Expected response rates. Microsoft Learn. learn.microsoft.com
UK Cabinet Office. Civil Service People Survey 2025: results highlights. GOV.UK, 2025. gov.uk
Gartner. Press release, 24 October 2023. Reported by HR Dive. hrdive.com
Visier. Employee survey, October 2024. Reported by HR Dive. HR Dive
Preston, C.C. and Colman, A.M. Acta Psychologica 104 (2000): 1-15. doi.org; Brysbaert, M. Behavior Research Methods (2026). springer.com
Suarez-Alvarez, J. et al. "Using reversed items in Likert scales: a questionable practice." Psicothema 30, no. 2 (2018): 149-158. psicothema.com (PDF)
SurveyMonkey. Day-of-the-week send study. SurveyMonkey Curiosity. surveymonkey.com
Porter, S.R., Whitcomb, M.E. and Weitzer, W.H. "Multiple surveys of students and survey fatigue." New Directions for Institutional Research 121 (2004): 63-73. unm.edu (PDF)
Qualtrics. Confidentiality overview, support documentation. qualtrics.com; Microsoft Viva Glint. Confidentiality and suppression in reports. learn.microsoft.com
Sweeney, L. "Simple Demographics Often Identify People Uniquely." Carnegie Mellon University, Data Privacy Working Paper 3, 2000. dataprivacylab.org (PDF)
Bain and Company. The Employee Net Promoter System. netpromotersystem.com
Schaufeli, W. Utrecht Work Engagement Scale. wilmarschaufeli.nl; Mind Garden. Maslach Burnout Inventory. mindgarden.com; COPSOQ International Network. COPSOQ III guidelines. copsoq-network.org
Culture Amp. "What is a good survey response rate?" Culture Amp blog. cultureamp.com

Send the employee engagement survey this week

Twenty questions, five to six minutes, anonymous by default. Open it in the editor, change anything, and share one link.

Use this template