Form questions
Internal communications survey questions, channel by channel
Twenty questions covers an annual review and ten covers a channel audit. Three cannot be skipped: how useful each channel is, rated one at a time; how often people hear important news from a colleague before an official channel; and which single channel they would keep if only one survived. The last one breaks the tie the ratings leave behind.
An internal comms survey that asks whether communication is good produces a number nobody can act on. Rating each channel on its own produces a decision about which one to stop running, which is the only result worth the effort of asking.
The questions
Where you sit
Which part of the business do you work in?DropdownRequired
The segment that matters. Head office and the depot read nothing in common.
Do you work at a desk most days?Single choice
Yes, no, a mix. This single question explains most of the variance in the channel grid.
Do you have a work email address you check daily?Single choice
Frontline staff often do not, and every email based channel scores accordingly.
How long have you worked here?Dropdown
New starters rate the intranet higher because they still use it to find things.
The channels
How useful is the weekly or monthly email?Rating gridRequired
Row one of a usefulness grid whose first column is do not use.
How useful is the intranet news page?Rating gridRequired
Row two.
How useful is the noticeboard or screen in the workplace?Rating gridRequired
Row three. Often the only channel that reaches a non desk worker.
How useful are team meetings as a source of company news?Rating gridRequired
Row four. Managers are a channel whether or not anyone manages them as one.
How useful is the messaging app announcements channel?Rating gridRequired
Row five.
How useful is the all hands or town hall?Rating gridRequired
Row six.
How much of the last all hands did you watch or attend?Single choice
Include an I did not know about it option, which is frequently the largest slice.
How much of the regular email do you usually read?Single choice
All of it, the headings only, whatever is at the top, I delete it, I do not receive it.
If you could keep only one channel, which would it be?Single choiceRequired
A forced single choice across the same list. The most decisive question in the survey.
What reaches you
How often do you hear important company news from a colleague first?Single choiceRequired
Never through almost always. This measures the gap between publishing and reaching.
Do you understand why the big decisions of this year were made?Single choice
Understanding the reason is a different thing from having been told the outcome.
Can you find something you were told three months ago?Single choice
A retrieval question. Most internal comms is broadcast only and fails this badly.
Do you know where to ask a question about a company announcement?Single choice
What you want
What would you like more of?Multiple choice
Decisions and the reasons behind them, other sites, customer news, safety, recognition, or less of everything.
What did you find out too late this year?Long text
One example is enough and it is usually the most quoted answer in the report.
Anything else about how news reaches you?Long text
Which questions to make required
Four things are required and everything else is optional. The business area is required because a channel result that cannot be split between head office and the floor is useless. Every grid row is required, since a partly completed usefulness grid cannot be averaged and the grid is the whole survey. Hearing news from a colleague first is required because it is the one measure of reach that does not rely on self reported reading. The keep only one question is required because it is the tie breaker the decision depends on.
- Which part of the business do you work in?
- How useful is the weekly or monthly email?
- How useful is the intranet news page?
- How useful is the noticeboard or screen in the workplace?
- How useful are team meetings as a source of company news?
- How useful is the messaging app announcements channel?
- How useful is the all hands or town hall?
- If you could keep only one channel, which would it be?
- How often do you hear important company news from a colleague first?
The form built from these questions
A static copy of a form built from part of the bank, exactly as it renders.
How to change this for a different organisation
A company with no frontline. Where everyone has a desk and a work account, the noticeboard row is dead weight, so replace it with rows for the documentation site and for direct messages from leaders. Add a question about notification load, because in a fully digital workplace the problem is rarely reach and almost always volume. A multi site or multi language workforce. Add a question about the language people would prefer to read company news in, and a row to the grid for anything translated. Report the grid by site rather than by function, since a site with a strong manager will outperform the official channels everywhere and that is worth knowing before you invest in another newsletter. A change or restructure round. Cut the channel grid to three rows and add four questions about the change itself: whether people know what is happening, when they will know more, who to ask, and whether they believe what they have been told. The last one is uncomfortable and it is the only one that predicts how the change will go. Run it fortnightly while the change is live and publish the answers each time, because during a restructure the survey is itself a channel.
Questions people ask
Why rate channels one at a time?
Because a single satisfaction score averages the channel people rely on with the one nobody opens, and an average tells you to do more of everything. A grid with a do not use column tells you which channel to retire, which is the only decision most internal comms teams actually need to make.
Should desk and frontline staff answer the same survey?
Yes, with a question that identifies which they are. The interesting result is almost always the difference between the two groups on the same channel, and that comparison disappears the moment you run two separate surveys with two different question sets.
Is a keep only one channel question fair?
It is deliberately unfair and that is the point. Polite ratings produce five channels that all score somewhere around useful, and a forced single choice breaks the tie. Treat the result as a ranking exercise rather than as a mandate, and expect it to surprise the people who run the losing channel.
How do you measure reach rather than opinion?
Ask how often people hear important news from a colleague before an official channel. Self reported reading is generous and platform analytics measure opening rather than understanding. The colleague question is the closest thing to an honest reach measure that a survey can produce.
What should you do before running it?
Decide what you will stop. A comms survey that can only add channels will add channels, and the workforce will tell you next year that there is too much. Announcing in advance that something will be retired is what makes the ratings honest, because people answer differently when the question has consequences.
How often should it run?
Annually is right for the full instrument. Run it more often and the same channels score the same way, because channel habits move slowly. The exception is a live restructure, where a short fortnightly version is worth it and where the survey stops being a measurement and becomes part of the communication.
Do managers count as a communication channel?
They are usually the most trusted one and the least managed. Giving team meetings a row in the grid makes that visible, and a high score there with low scores everywhere else tells you the official channels are decorative. It also tells you that a change badly briefed to managers will not land anywhere.
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