Employee Satisfaction Survey Template
An employee satisfaction survey asks whether people are content with the job they have: the pay, the manager, the hours, the place. An employee engagement survey asks whether they give it more than the job requires. A satisfied team can be unengaged, so measure the one you are going to act on. Twenty questions, one 5-point scale, about four minutes on a phone, anonymous. Take it here or open it in the editor.
- 20questions
- About 4 minto complete
- 5-pointsatisfaction scale
- Anonymousone shared link
What this employee satisfaction survey measures
Four questions give you a score you can compare with a published figure. Sixteen more tell you which part of the job is pulling it down.
The core four. Job, pay, organization, and whether people would recommend the place as somewhere to work. These are the four items of the U.S. federal Global Satisfaction Index, reproduced word for word because they are public domain and a 2024 benchmark exists for them.[1] Their average percent positive is your score.
That is the read at the level of the employer. For the read at the level of one person's job, the work itself, the workload, the say they have and where the role leads, the job satisfaction survey covers those facets and settles which named instrument you are allowed to use.
The seven themes. Work environment, manager, growth, workload and hours, team, pay and benefits, and recognition and voice. Two or three questions each: enough for a team-level number to mean something, and no more. One open answer sits near the end, asked as a single change.
One scale, written for a phone. Every rated question uses the same 5-point satisfaction scale; a longer scale adds nothing you can act on.[7] Each question fits one screen and takes one tap, because 73.9% of responses on this platform arrive from a phone.[4]
All 20 questions are already built into the online survey creator, scale and labels included: open it, change any wording, drop a theme, and send one link.
The 20 employee satisfaction survey questions
Every question, its scale, and what a low score is telling you. Copy a theme or the whole set, or open the template and skip the retyping.
Core four: the score
The U.S. federal Global Satisfaction Index, word for word. Their average percent positive is your score, with a published figure to read it against.
- Considering everything, how satisfied are you with your job?The headline number. If only one question gets answered, this is the one to have.
- Considering everything, how satisfied are you with your pay?The lowest of the four in every year of the federal series. Read the pay section before you react.
- Considering everything, how satisfied are you with your organization?The place as a whole. A gap below the job item points at leadership or culture, not the work.
- I recommend my organization as a good place to work.Whether people would put their name to it. Agree scale, as in the original.
Work environment
The two conditions people mention first when the job is fine but the day is hard.
- How satisfied are you with the tools and systems you work with every day?The cheapest fix on the page, and the one people notice fastest.
- How satisfied are you with the place you do your work from, whether an office, a site or your home?Worded for office, site and home, so remote and frontline staff answer the same question.
Manager
Support and fairness fail separately, so both get a question.
- How satisfied are you with the support you get from your manager?Help when it is needed. Low scores cluster by team, which is the point.
- How satisfied are you with how fairly your manager treats people?Fair treatment of everyone, not just the person answering.
Growth
Learning and moving are different promises; people can have one without the other.
- How satisfied are you with your chances to learn new skills here?Whether the job is still teaching them anything.
- How satisfied are you with where this job can lead, here, up or sideways?A path, sideways included. Watch years two to four.
Workload and hours
The amount of work, when it happens, and what it leaves room for are three different complaints.
- How satisfied are you with the amount of work you are expected to get through?Volume. Low here with a high hours score means the job is too big, not too long.
- How satisfied are you with how much say you have over when you work?When the work happens, and how much say people have over it.
- How satisfied are you with the balance between your work and the rest of your life?What the job costs outside the job.
Team
Colleagues are why many people stay in a job they would otherwise rate low.
- How satisfied are you with the people you work with day to day?Often the highest score on the page, which makes a low one stand out.
- How satisfied are you with how well your team works together?How work moves between people, separate from whether they like each other.
Pay and benefits
The core four covers the pay amount. These two find out whether the problem is the package or the explanation.
- How satisfied are you with your benefits: leave, health cover, pension or retirement plan, and the rest?Often the cheaper lever when the pay answer is low.
- How satisfied are you with how pay decisions are explained to you?People forgive a number they understand.
Recognition, your words, and the close
One open answer before the end, while people still have something to say. Then a rating to close, the ending that loses the fewest answers.
- How satisfied are you with how often good work gets noticed here?A manager can move this in a week. If it is low, the open answers will say so.
- What one change would most improve how satisfied you are with your job?Asked as one change, so the answer is an action, not a complaint.
- How satisfied are you with how the organization responds when you raise a concern?Whether raising something changes anything, which is what decides who answers next year.
The 10-question short form, about two minutes. Keep questions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 13, 15 and 18: the core four plus one per theme, ending on recognition. Under ten questions, people on a phone complete 83.7% of the time, on par with desktop, so the short form costs you detail, not answers.[4] For anything shorter, or more often than once a year, the employee pulse survey is built for five to ten questions every few weeks.
The pay questions: both sides, and what to do with the answer
Three of the twenty questions ask about pay and benefits. Some organizations leave pay out on purpose. Here is the case each way, and what the answer is for.
The case for leaving pay out. You cannot fix pay from a survey. Pay bands are set by budget and market, not by a score. The answer is also predictably low: in the federal benchmark, pay is the lowest core item, 59% against 69% for the job itself.[2] Asking a question you have already decided not to act on teaches people the survey changes nothing.
The case for asking anyway. People notice when pay is missing and read the omission as avoidance. More usefully, the pay question is the only way to learn whether pay is why people are unhappy or leaving, or whether it stands in for something else. A team that scores pay low and everything else high has a pay problem. A team that scores pay low alongside manager, recognition and growth feels undervalued, and a raise would not fix that.
What to do with the answer. Say in the invitation what you will and will not do with it. Then read the three pay items together. If the amount scores low but the explanation scores well, the problem is the number; publish the review cycle and its date. If the explanation scores low, nobody knows how pay is decided, which is fixable this quarter without a budget. If the open answers say "fair" more than "low", the pay equity survey asks the fairness questions this one does not.
If benefits is the weak item, find out which benefits people would trade before spending on new ones. The flexible benefits survey does that with a ranking exercise this page keeps out of a satisfaction score.
How to score it: percent positive, with a worked example
One rule for every question, one average for the score, and a published figure to read it against.
The rule. For each question, percent positive is the share of people who chose the top two points, satisfied or very satisfied, out of everyone who answered it. Blanks are left out of both top and bottom. The satisfaction score is the plain average of the core four's percent positive, the same method as the federal index, so you can read yours against it, allowing for the different scale labels.[1] Theme scores use the same rule across a theme's questions.
| Core item | Top two answers | Answered | Percent positive |
|---|---|---|---|
| Job | 34 | 50 | 68% |
| Pay | 24 | 50 | 48% |
| Organization | 31 | 50 | 62% |
| Recommend (agree scale) | 33 | 50 | 66% |
| Satisfaction score | 61% |
Worked example, 50 responses. The core four land at 68, 48, 62 and 66 percent positive, so the score is 61. The 2024 federal index was 65, with job at 69 and pay at 59.[2] This organization sits a little under overall, close on the job itself, and eleven points under on pay, which is where to look first. The numbers are invented for the example; the arithmetic is the part to copy.
Read the gaps, not the score. Sort the seven themes by percent positive and look at the distance from top to bottom. A team whose people item scores 84 and whose growth scores 39 has a growth problem, whatever its overall figure. How the lowest teams feel is a lighter, separate read: the employee morale survey asks how work feels this month, not how content people are with its parts.
How to send an employee satisfaction survey in five steps
A send plan for a workforce that will mostly answer on a phone, between other things. What every send has in common, a single link, one follow-up, a stated length and a closing date, is covered in the survey research guide.
Say what the pay answers can change before you ask
The invitation comes from whoever sets pay and says what the three pay questions can move this year: the review cycle, not the bands.
One copy per team, each with its own link
No question asks which team someone sits in, so the cut comes from the send. A team under five answers through the copy above it.
Send it for a phone, at a phone time
Send it at the start of a shift or the end of a stand-up; frontline and field staff answer then or not at all.
One owner outside the line, and a floor of five
The owner in the editor sees every response row, so make that HR or operations, never a line manager. Five is the floor the big platforms default to.[6]
Plan for a third to a half in year one
The U.S. federal census of its own workforce, with a mandate behind it, got 35% in 2024.[2] Half your headcount is a strong first run.
From results to two changes in 30 days
A satisfaction score nobody acts on is a fatigue survey. One conversation per team, two changes for the organization.
Week one. Share the score, all seven themes and the themed open answers with every employee. Pick the two themes with the biggest gap to the score, not the two lowest numbers.
Weeks two to four. Every manager holds one 30-minute conversation with their team on one question: what would move this theme here? Every conversation ends with one action, an owner and a date. When a change lands, name the theme that prompted it.
Watch the teams that are losing people. If the lowest scores sit in the teams with the highest turnover, satisfaction is telling you why people leave, and the staff retention survey asks the people still in those teams how likely they are to be next.
Next year. Same twenty questions, same wording, same week. The second run is where the score starts to mean something, because the only benchmark that fits your organization is your own last result.
Employee satisfaction survey FAQ
What is a good employee satisfaction score?
The only large published figure with a stated method is the U.S. federal index: 65% positive in 2024, with pay at 59% and the job itself at 69%.[2] That is a public-sector reference point, not a target. Your own score against last year, on identical wording, is the number that means something.
How often should we run it?
Once a year, wording unchanged, so the score stays comparable. A second full survey soon after the first costs response: one randomised study measured a ten-point drop.[5] Between annual runs, check only the two themes you are fixing.
Can we use a published satisfaction questionnaire instead?
The best-known ones are licensed for research, not for a company survey. The Minnesota questionnaire is free for research or clinical work only, under a licence that bars commercial use. The Bowling Green scales are free to download but may not be passed on to anyone else. The four core items here are public domain and the other sixteen were written for this page, so everything on it is free to copy, edit and translate.[3]
Is a staff satisfaction survey different from an employee satisfaction survey?
No. Staff satisfaction survey and workplace satisfaction survey are the same instrument under different names. Use whichever term your organization already uses and keep the questions the same.
Satisfaction is a settled judgement about the job. Recognition is about frequency and source, which is why the staff recognition survey asks who does the noticing and how recently rather than how content somebody is.
Methods and sources
What this template is based on
The core four are FEVS Global Satisfaction Index items, read against 2024 governmentwide scores;[1][2] the send plan uses the SuperSurvey Response Benchmark.[4]
Question licensing
Core four: public-domain FEVS.[3] Gallup Q12 needs written consent, UWES is academic-use only, the MBI is paid; the MSQ is free for research and clinical use only and the JDI may not be passed on. Edit the originals freely.
Limits and disclosure
The reference score is a U.S. federal census, not a norm for private companies or other countries;[2] the benchmark tracks openers, not workforce participation; the scoring example uses invented numbers.
SuperSurvey makes the editor this template opens in. Everything here is free to use with or without it.
References
- U.S. Office of Personnel Management. 2024 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey Technical Report, 2024, pp. 12-13. opm.gov (PDF)
- U.S. Office of Personnel Management. 2024 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey Governmentwide Management Report, 2024, pp. 6-8. opm.gov (PDF)
- United States Code. 17 U.S.C. 105, Subject matter of copyright: United States Government works. Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. law.cornell.edu
- 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.
- 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 (EX). Qualtrics Support. qualtrics.com
- Brysbaert, M. Behavior Research Methods (2026), doi 10.3758/s13428-026-03101-1. springer.com
Send the employee satisfaction survey this week
Twenty questions, one scale, about four minutes on a phone, anonymous by design. Open it in the editor, change anything, and share one link.
Use this template