Operational efficiency survey for one team, site or department
15 questions for the people inside one team: whether work arrives ready, whether tools and approvals let it move, how often it waits, how often it comes back, and where the week goes. Try it here first, then open it in the editor.
- 15questions
- 6 minto complete
- 1 teamnot one workflow
Decide whose week you are asking about
One team, one site or one department, over a stated period. That decision is what separates an answer you can act on from a score with nowhere to send it.
Write the unit down before you write a question: the twelve people in dispatch, the Leeds site, customer operations during September. Put it in the survey title, because that is the one line every respondent reads, and it tells them which of their several jobs to answer about.
Then keep the period in the questions. Both frequency items say "in a normal week" on purpose. Asked about efficiency in general, people answer with an opinion about the company; asked about a normal week, they answer about last Tuesday, and last Tuesday is something you can go and look at.
The same subject comes in a second shape, and picking between them is a choice of unit rather than a choice of size. This survey is scoped by people: it asks a group how their own week runs. If what you need is where one sequence of work stalls, a process improvement survey template follows a single work item from its start trigger to its end trigger. Neither one is a subset of the other: this page is scoped by people, that page by a work item.
Three more sit close enough to be confused with it. An internal control questionnaire walks the same ground asking whether a control operated, so somebody can evidence it, and the person answering owns the control rather than does the work. A lessons learned questions survey runs once, after something has finished, about that finished thing. And a strategic planning questionnaire decides what the department should be doing next, where this one asks why what you already decided takes so long.
The 15 operational efficiency survey questions
Every question below is in the survey at the top of this page, in this order. Copy one group, copy all 15, or open the template and reword them.
Who is answering
Two classification items, both required, both first. An approver and a front-line worker describe the same delay from opposite ends, and one average hides both.
- Which of these is closest to what you do in this team?The cut that makes everything below readable. Read every rating by this answer before you read it as a team total.
- How long have you worked in this team?The one cut that survives in a small team without naming anybody. New joiners see friction that long-service people have routed around.
Does the work have what it needs
Three ratings on one 1 to 5 line with only the two ends labelled, which is the shape the editor builds: does work arrive ready, is there room to do it, can you see where it has got to.
- In a normal week I have enough capacity to finish my work without routine overtime.Capacity as a week rather than as a feeling. Routine overtime is the part a person can answer about without estimating a percentage.
- The work that reaches me arrives with everything I need to start it.Readiness, judged by whoever has to start the work. A low answer points upstream, at somebody you can go and talk to.
- I can see the status of work in progress without having to ask anyone.Chasing a status is unlogged work. Where this scores low, some of the waiting counted at question 11 is people asking each other where something is.
What gets in the way
Four ratings on the same 1 to 5 line, each naming one thing that can be changed on its own: a tool, an approval step, a decision right, a gap in cover.
- The tools I use let me finish a task without a workaround.A workaround is the visible part of a tool problem: the spreadsheet beside the system, the message sent because a status never updates.
- Approvals in my work happen quickly enough to keep the work moving.The cheapest item here to change, because changing one approval is a decision rather than a project.
- When something unusual comes up, I know who can decide it.Exceptions are where a team loses whole days: if nobody knows who decides, the work waits for a meeting.
- If I am away, someone else can pick up my work without a delay.The only item here that gets worse quietly. It reads low long before anybody is off sick.
Whether it lands, and how often it stalls
The outcome rating, then two frequency items and one forced choice, which turn "it feels slow" into a count and a location. The two frequency items share one set of five options on purpose: people read the range of categories they are offered as a statement of what is normal and answer relative to it,[2] so two different ladders would make waiting and rework incomparable.
- We finish work by the date we told people we would.The outcome item, placed after its drivers so it is answered in their light, and just before the two counts that explain it.
- In a normal week, how often does your work sit waiting on someone else?Waiting is almost never logged, so this is the only count of it you will get. Keep the five options identical between runs, or the runs use different yardsticks.[2]
- In a normal week, how often do you redo work because something was wrong, missing or late?Kept apart from waiting because a queue and a specification get fixed in different places by different people.
- Which one of these costs this team the most time?One choice, not a ranking. A single forced choice gives a count per category that you can put in front of whoever owns that category.
In your words
Two open boxes, last, because nothing substantive should sit behind a comments box.
- Describe one thing that slows this team down most weeks: what it is, when it happens, and what it costs you.What it is, when it happens, what it costs. Those three parts turn a complaint into something a manager can go and look at.
- What one change would give the team back the most time next month?One change, one month. Both constraints force an answer small enough to actually try, and the survey ends on something the team can do.
Only the first two questions are required, so a skipped rating stays a skipped rating instead of a guess. The eight ratings are a 1 to 5 line with the two ends labelled, which is the shape the editor builds; if the number of points is the argument you want first, it is set out on points on a rating scale. Nothing here is scored.
Three of those 15 are rewrites, and the rewrite is the design rule: ask for a count or a category, because an answer shaped like that has somewhere to send it, while an answer shaped like an opinion does not.[3] The middle column below quotes what this template used to ask.
| Instead of asking | Ask this |
|---|---|
| Are our processes efficient and well run? | We finish work by the date we told people we would. |
| Where do you lose the most time? Choose up to three. | Which one of these costs this team the most time? |
| Are the tools and training adequate? | The tools I use let me finish a task without a workaround. Then the open box at question 15. |
The first of those is the commonest defect on this subject: two judgements joined by "and", so somebody who thinks the work is well run but slow cannot say so, and a middling answer tells you nothing about which half it belonged to.
What the answers tell you
Fifteen answers are a conversation. Sixty are a map, and the first two questions are what let you draw it.
Cut by role first, then look at the gap. Put the waiting counts from question 11 beside the answers at question 1 and see whether the people who do the work and the people who approve it describe the same week. Where they disagree, the disagreement is the finding.
Read how often against where. Question 13 counts each category of lost time; questions 11 and 12 say how often the two commonest kinds happen. A category few people pick but that stops those people for a day needs a different fix from one costing everybody ten minutes. There is no score to compute: those two numbers side by side are the method.
Read the four "what gets in the way" items one by one, not as a theme average. Each names something that can be changed on its own, and approvals are the cheapest of the four, because changing one is a decision rather than a project.
Then read the open boxes. Question 14 says what the slow thing is and what it costs; question 15 says what somebody would do about it. Read them beside question 13 and you have the category, the mechanism and a candidate change in one pass.
Publish what you are changing, and say when you will ask again. A survey that measures the same team twice with nothing happening in between measures how patient they are.
On sizes: read a group of fewer than about ten answers as comments rather than as percentages, and do not cut a small team by role and tenure at once, because the cells get small enough to identify people. The sample size guide has the general version of that argument.
Before you press send
Five decisions this particular survey forces, none of which is a general rule about surveys.
Put the team and the period in the title
Not "Operational Efficiency Survey". "Dispatch, September". Almost nobody reads past a survey title, so the unit of analysis belongs in it, and every "in a normal week" below then means the same week to everybody.
Invite everyone in the unit, including the people who supply it
Front-line, supervisors, the function that feeds work in, and whoever manages the site. Question 1 sorts them out afterwards. Nothing weights or balances the responses later, so who you invite is the only lever you have on the mix.
Name the reader before question 1
Two facts, stated above question 1: the name of whoever will read the raw answers, and whether an answer stays attached to its author once findings reach a meeting. Settle both once and repeat them verbatim in the invitation. The duty to disclose that rests with whoever runs the study, not with the respondent to infer.[4]
Quote the same duration everywhere it appears
If it says 6 minutes on this page, it says 6 in the invitation and 6 in the reminder too. A web-survey experiment found the advertised duration shifting both start and completion rates,[1] which makes it part of the instrument rather than decoration around it. Adding a page after somebody has begun a 15-question survey breaks the same promise.
Commit to a date for what changes, then send
Close on a single line saying when the team will hear what you found and what you are altering because of it. Then open the template in the free online survey creator, put the team name in the title, and send it.
Operational efficiency survey FAQ
What is an operational efficiency survey?
A short questionnaire that asks the people in one team, site or department where work slows down: whether it arrives ready to start, whether tools and approvals let it move, how often it waits on somebody else, how often it comes back to be redone, and where the week actually goes. It is scoped to a group of people, over a period, rather than to a single workflow.
What questions should an operational efficiency survey ask?
Ones whose answer names something you can go and change. "How can we be more efficient?" comes back as opinion; "how often does your work sit waiting on someone else?" comes back as a count, and "which one of these costs this team the most time?" comes back as a category with a number beside it. The 15 above are built on that rule, and Pew's guidance on writing survey questions is the general version of it.[3]
How many questions should it have?
15 is enough, and this template ships 15. A web-survey experiment varied the length announced to respondents: starting and finishing both fell as the announced figure rose, and answers given late in a questionnaire came back faster, shorter and more alike.[1] That was a general online sample rather than colleagues answering an internal survey, so read it as a reason for the design and not as a forecast about your response rate.
Is this the same as a process improvement survey?
No, and it is a choice rather than a smaller version of the same thing. This survey is scoped by people: one team, one site, one department, over a period. A process improvement survey is scoped by a work item: one named workflow, from its start trigger to its end trigger. Neither is a subset of the other, so pick the one whose unit matches the decision you have to make.
Should it be anonymous?
Pick one before you send it, put it in a line at the top of the survey, then hold to it. Under anonymous, nothing links an answer back to a person and reporting happens in groups. Under confidential, that link survives but hardly anybody can follow it. Either way the question a respondent is really asking is who reads this, and answering it is part of published best practice.[4]
How often should we run it?
Twice a year suits a survey this size: often enough that a change made after one run shows up in the next, rare enough that the team is not asked again about a month in which nothing changed. Keep the wording and the frequency options identical between runs, or the two are not comparable.[2]
Does a low score mean somebody is underperforming?
No. Nothing here is scored and no item is about a named person. Every rating asks about the conditions the work runs in, so a low answer locates a queue, a tool or an approval step. If the subject is really how a group works together, the team effectiveness questions ask that instead.
Michael Hodge, survey methodology and questionnaire design · Updated 9 September 2026 · How templates are reviewed
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Sources (5)
- Galesic M, Bosnjak M. Effects of questionnaire length on participation and indicators of response quality in a web survey. Public Opinion Quarterly, 73(2), 349-360, 2009. DOI 10.1093/poq/nfp031. academic.oup.com
- Schwarz N, Hippler H-J, Deutsch B, Strack F. Response scales: effects of category range on reported behavior and comparative judgments. Public Opinion Quarterly, 49(3), 388-395, 1985. academic.oup.com
- Pew Research Center. Writing survey questions. pewresearch.org
- American Association for Public Opinion Research. Best practices for survey research. aapor.org
- Health and Safety Executive (UK). Management Standards Indicator Tool, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. hse.gov.uk
All 15 questions were written for this template. Shipping 15 rather than the fifty an operations questionnaire is usually padded to, and putting the open boxes last, follows a web-survey experiment in which starting and finishing both fell as the announced length rose, and answers given late came back faster, shorter and more alike.[1] The identical option ladder on the two frequency items follows two experiments showing that respondents infer what is normal from the range of categories they are offered and answer relative to it.[2] The rewrite pairs follow published guidance on writing survey questions,[3] and the invitation advice follows published best practice for survey research.[4] Nothing on this page reproduces a licensed instrument. The Lean and Six Sigma bodies of knowledge and the Balanced Scorecard are all restricted material, and none of them is reproduced, paraphrased or used as a section frame here. Where a published instrument does cover part of this ground, it is named and linked rather than copied: the UK Health and Safety Executive publishes its Management Standards Indicator Tool under the Open Government Licence v3.0, and that is the instrument to reach for if workload stress rather than work flow is your actual subject.[5]
Ask about the week, not about efficiency
15 questions, about 6 minutes, and the first two make every answer after them readable by role. Open it in the editor, put your own team and period in the title, and send it to everyone in the unit.
Use this template