Employee Satisfaction Survey Template

Satisfaction and engagement get conflated, but they answer different questions. Engagement asks whether people bring extra effort; satisfaction asks whether the basic deal — pay, balance, workspace, tools, recognition — feels fair. Dissatisfaction with these hygiene factors rarely shows up as complaints; it shows up as resignations that "came out of nowhere". This survey exists to catch it while it is still cheap to fix.

Why these five rows. Each matrix row is a condition the company directly controls, which is the honest test for including a question: never ask about what you won't change. Pay and benefits anchors the list because pretending it doesn't matter costs credibility; balance and workspace capture the post-hybrid reality that where and how much people work are now negotiated conditions; tools and equipment is the cheapest fix on the list and routinely scores worst; recognition costs nothing and predicts retention embarrassingly well. The separate 1–7 overall item matters statistically — when overall satisfaction is high but a row is low, that row is tolerated; when both are low, it is the reason.

The intent question is the alarm. "Do you picture yourself here in two years?" converts vague sentiment into a leading indicator. Track the percentage answering "probably not" or "no" — that number moves quarters before attrition does. Workload gets its own question rather than a matrix row because overload is a fact to size, not a satisfaction to rate.

Reading a wave honestly. Participation is the first result: a 90 percent response rate means the averages speak for the company, while 40 percent means the disgruntled or the devoted self-selected, and you should say which before quoting numbers. Publish an area's breakdown only when enough of its people answered that no individual is guessable — five responses is a common floor for showing a subgroup at all.

What we left out. Manager-specific questions (they belong in a review cycle with different confidentiality rules), engagement drivers like meaning and growth (see the engagement survey template — running both in one sitting doubles length and halves honesty), and any identity fields. The area dropdown includes "Prefer not to say" on purpose.

Who runs this. People-ops teams on a twice-yearly cadence, founders after a compensation review to test whether it landed, and office managers making the case for equipment budget with data instead of anecdotes.

Make it yours. Reword matrix rows to your actual conditions — add "Commute or remote policy" or "Benefits usefulness" as sixth rows if they're live debates. Set a close date so the wave ends cleanly, keep the form password-protected for internal distribution, and export the CSV to average each row by area. The one-change open question is your action list; answer it publicly, even when the answer is no.