Organizational Culture Survey Template
A culture survey asks whether the norms and values you say you have are the ones people actually work inside. Sixteen questions, about four minutes, one 5-point agreement scale, and nothing that asks who is answering. Answer it below, copy the block you want, or open all sixteen in the editor.
- 16questions
- About 4 minto complete
- 5-pointagreement scale
- 6-itemshort form
What a culture survey measures, and how it differs from an engagement survey
Culture is a property of the organization. Engagement is a property of a person. That line decides which of the two you should be sending.
Every published culture instrument builds on Edgar Schein's definition: the pattern of basic assumptions a group has learned in coping with its problems, which worked well enough to be taught to new members as the correct way to see things.[1] You read it from what gets rewarded, what gets tolerated, and how decisions get made.
A culture item asks about here and we; an engagement item asks about I. A person can be engaged inside a culture they think is broken, and disengaged inside one they think is fine, so averaging the two produces a number nobody can act on. If motivation and intent to stay are the real question, use the employee engagement survey template.
This template covers the whole organization at one moment. Every item is present tense and about here; none asks about a moment in one person's own history. If the question is one person's journey from applying to leaving, the employee experience survey questions are anchored to those stages. Do not assume your own answer either way: on Gallup's culture indicator, only 20% of U.S. employees strongly agree that they feel connected to their organization's culture.[2]
The 16 culture survey questions, and why each is worded this way
Copy one block or the whole set. Every rated question uses the same 5-point agreement scale, anchored at strongly disagree and strongly agree, and the line under each says what it can and cannot tell you.
Fifteen rated items across five dimensions, then one open box. Nothing asks for a name, an email, a team or a job title, so it can go out anonymously as it stands. All sixteen are built, so open them in the online questionnaire maker and change any wording first.
One concept per item, which is the AAPOR rule this page is built on: "Questions should be specific and ask only about one concept at a time."[3] An item that joins two ideas cannot be answered by anyone whose organization does one and not the other. The scale trade-offs are on the Likert scale question design page.
The six-item short form is questions 1, 6, 9, 12, 15 and 16: one from each group. Use it when a full survey will not get signed off, and run all sixteen at least once first.
If you will cut results by team, add that question yourself. This template collects no segment at all: a fixed department list fits almost no organization, and every segment shrinks the smallest group you can report. And if comparing groups is the point rather than a footnote, that is a different instrument: the survey questions about diversity are built to be cut by group and to handle what that does to group size.
Values in practice (3 questions)
The summary item, then whether people can apply the values, then whether the people at the top do.
- Overall, the culture here is healthy.A summary item, and "healthy" is left undefined on purpose. It gives you the one number worth trending and tells you nothing about which dimension moved; the other fifteen are for that.
- I understand what our values mean in day-to-day decisions.Separates knowing the values from being able to apply them. Someone can recite three words and still not know what they change on a Tuesday.
- Senior leaders act in ways that match our values.Senior leaders, not managers: two different populations, and this item is about the top of the organization. Swap in whatever your organization calls that group before you send.
What gets rewarded and what gets tolerated (3 questions)
Culture reads more clearly from what an organization allows than from what it says.
- Good work here gets recognized.Worded as a norm rather than as a feeling, so it stays about the organization. It does not separate recognition that never happens from recognition that happens and does not land.
- When someone here behaves against our values, it gets dealt with.The hardest item here and the first one somebody will ask you to drop. Without it the survey measures what is said and never what is allowed.
- People are treated fairly here.Left unqualified: fairly in what is not specified, so one answer covers pay, promotion, workload and discipline at once. Treat it as a place to look, not as a finding.
How decisions get made (3 questions)
Who decides, whether they explain, and what happens to the person who objects.
- It is clear who makes which decisions here.About clarity of authority, not about the quality of the decisions. Someone can dislike every decision made this year and still answer this one high.
- Senior leaders explain the reasons behind decisions.One concept, not three. An item asking whether decisions are communicated, with reasons, in a timely way cannot be answered by anyone whose organization does two of the three.
- I can raise a problem here without being blamed.Written independently of any published psychological safety scale, so it is free to copy and edit. It asks about the consequence, which is the part a respondent can observe.
How people work together (3 questions)
The cross-team pair, and the one inclusion item this template carries.
- Departments here keep each other informed.Across departments only. An item that joins "within my team" and "across departments" strands anyone whose team is fine and whose organization is not.
- People here help each other out without being asked.A norm about what colleagues do for each other unprompted. It is not a workload item: a stretched team can answer it high.
- Someone who is different from most people here would still fit in.One of the two inclusion-adjacent items here, reported for the whole organization. This template collects no demographics, so it cannot tell you whether the answer differs between groups, and that difference is the entire job of a dedicated inclusion survey.
Direction, and the story from outside (3 questions)
Two items on where the organization is going, one on the story it tells about itself.
- I know what this organization is trying to achieve.Direction, not agreement with the direction. Read it beside item 1: a place can be clear about where it is going and unhealthy on the way there.
- How things are done here changes when they need to.The adaptability item. Low here with high scores everywhere else describes a settled organization that has stopped moving, which is a different problem from an unhappy one.
- The way this place is described to outsiders matches what it is like to work here.The stated-versus-actual item in one sentence. Recruitment and communications will want to see this number, and it is the one they will least enjoy.
In your words (1 question)
One open box, deliberately not about culture in the abstract.
- What is one change we should make in the next 90 days to improve how work gets done here?Bounded on purpose: one change, one window, and a question about how work gets done. Asking someone to describe the culture in a text box asks them to do the analysis for you.
Do not add a second scale. If two items get a frequency scale and the rest keep the agreement scale, the sixteen stop being comparable and there is no profile to read. Change any wording you like; leave the scale alone.
The published culture instruments, and which items you may reuse
Four instruments do most of the work here, and three of them you may name and describe but not reprint. Worth knowing before you copy items off a page that does not say where they came from.
| Instrument | What it measures | What it asks of a respondent | May you reprint the items? |
|---|---|---|---|
| OCAI (Cameron and Quinn) | Four culture types across six dimensions: dominant characteristics, organizational leadership, management of employees, organization glue, strategic emphases and criteria of success. | Six questions, each splitting 100 points across four alternatives, answered twice: once for now and once for preferred. | No. The distributed instrument carries a Pearson Education permission line on every page.[4] |
| Denison Organizational Culture Survey | Four traits: involvement, consistency, adaptability and mission, each read through three indices. | 48 rated items. | No. All rights reserved.[5] |
| Great Place To Work Trust Index | Five focus areas of a high-trust culture: credibility, respect and fairness about leaders, pride and belonging about colleagues and the organization. | 60 statements plus 14 demographic questions, 10 to 20 minutes. The answers go to Great Place To Work rather than to you. | No. Proprietary, and it is a certification instrument rather than a diagnostic you run yourself.[6] |
| COPSOQ III | Psychosocial working conditions, including the two scales closest to this page: vertical trust and organizational justice. | Core, middle and long versions, on a five-level extent scale rather than an agreement scale. Its trust and justice items are worded like this: "Does the management trust the employees to do their work well?" and "Are conflicts resolved in a fair way?" | Yes, with attribution, under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. But no modified version may be called COPSOQ, and the guidelines ask that all core items are administered together.[7] |
Why the sixteen items above are ours rather than theirs. The three proprietary instruments cannot be reprinted at all. COPSOQ III can be redistributed with attribution, but its no-derivatives term is the opposite of what a template page is for, because the point here is that you edit the items.[7] Ours are written independently, which is what makes them free to change.
What a rating survey cannot reach. Schein's levels put visible artifacts at the top, stated values below them, and shared basic assumptions at the bottom, the ones nobody says out loud because everybody already holds them.[1] A 5-point scale gets at the first two well and the third badly, because you can only rate an assumption once you have noticed it. That is what question 16 is for.
One thing not to reuse: the profit figures. The numbers everyone quotes about culture and financial performance are one consultancy's results for its own clients, published under a partner achievements heading, not research.
How to read the sixteen answers, and what to run next
Two numbers per item, one rule about group size, then the decision about what follows.
Report two numbers for every item: the average and the share who chose 4 or 5. The average moves slowly and hides the shape; the top-box share is what shifts when a specific thing changes. Publish both, for all sixteen, in the order the survey asked them, and resist collapsing the set into one culture score.
Do not report a group of fewer than five. That is our recommendation rather than a published standard: in a group of four, somebody who knows the team can read one person off a chart. Then ask the same sixteen next time, because a profile is only worth anything against itself: once a year on a date you keep, or twice while something specific is being changed. Sending, reminding and closing are covered in the survey research guide.
If you want a few of the same items monthly rather than the full set yearly, that is what the pulse survey questions are for. If the blocker is candour, start with anonymous employee feedback. And if leadership wants one trendable number, the eNPS questions give a single item with a defined calculation.
Organizational culture survey FAQ
How many questions should a culture survey have?
Sixteen here: fifteen rated items across five dimensions and one open box, about four minutes. The count matters less than two other things: that every item asks about one concept,[3] and that you ask the same items again next time so the runs compare. If sixteen will not get signed off, the short form is questions 1, 6, 9, 12, 15 and 16.
What is the difference between a culture survey and an employee engagement survey?
A culture survey asks what is true here for everyone: what gets rewarded, what gets tolerated, how decisions get made. An engagement survey asks how one person feels about their own work and whether they intend to stay. The test is the pronoun: a culture item says here or we, an engagement item says I. The two can move in opposite directions in the same organization.
Should a culture survey be anonymous?
This one asks for no name, no email, no team and no job title, so it can go out anonymously as it stands. Anonymous means the survey never asked who someone was, so nobody can work it out afterwards. Confidential means somebody can, and a rule decides who. Say which you picked before question one, and promise only the one you are running.
Methods and sources
What this template is based on
The five dimensions cover the ground the published culture models share: values and their expression, what is rewarded and tolerated, decision-making, coordination across the organization, and direction.[4][5][6] The items themselves were written for this page against the one-concept rule.[3] The limit stated above, that a rating scale reaches artifacts and stated values more easily than shared assumptions, follows Schein.[1]
Question licensing
Nothing licensed is reproduced. The OCAI is reproduced only by permission of Pearson Education, the Denison survey is all rights reserved and the Trust Index is proprietary, so all three are named and described and none is reworded.[4][5][6] COPSOQ III is published under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 by the COPSOQ International Network; two of its items are quoted verbatim with attribution as an illustration, and no item here is derived from it.[7] Every question on this page is free to copy, edit and translate.
Limits and disclosure
A survey of this kind measures what people are willing to say about shared norms at one moment. It cannot tell you why a score is what it is, and it collects no demographics, so it cannot show whether different groups experience the place differently, which needs a survey designed for that. The five-person reporting floor is a rule you apply by hand rather than a product setting.
SuperSurvey makes the editor this template opens in. Everything on this page works with or without it.
References
- Schein, E. H. (1984). Coming to a New Awareness of Organizational Culture. MIT Sloan Management Review 25(2). sloanreview.mit.edu
- Gallup. Indicator: Organizational Culture. Published March 2023, updated January 2026. gallup.com
- AAPOR. Best Practices for Survey Research. American Association for Public Opinion Research. aapor.org
- Cameron, K. S. and Quinn, R. E. Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument, from Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture. Reproduced by permission of Pearson Education, Inc. chlnet.ca (PDF)
- Denison Consulting. Denison Organizational Culture Survey, 48 items. Copyright 2018 Denison Consulting, LLC. All rights reserved. denisonconsulting.com (PDF)
- Great Place To Work. Employee surveys and the Trust Index. greatplacetowork.com
- COPSOQ International Network. COPSOQ III guidelines and questionnaire, licence dated 18 August 2021, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. copsoq-network.org
Send it this week, and ask the same sixteen next year
Sixteen questions, about four minutes, one scale for all of them. Open it, edit any item, send one link.
Use this template