Form questions
Employee wellbeing survey questions that are not a diagnosis
Twenty questions is enough for an annual round and ten for a quarterly one. Three should always be there: how manageable the workload has been over a named period, whether people get a real break in a normal day, and whether they know how to reach the support the employer already pays for. None of the three needs to be required.
A workplace wellbeing survey should measure the conditions an employer controls, not the state of a person. These questions ask about workload, rest, recovery and whether people know what support exists, and none of them is required.
The questions
About your work
Which part of the organisation do you work in?Dropdown
Optional, with prefer not to say. The only segment this survey should hold.
Do you work shifts, nights or on call?Single choice
Recovery answers below mean something different for a shift worker.
How many hours do you usually work in a week?Single choice
Bands, not a number field. A precise figure invites people to defend it.
Workload and energy
Over the last two weeks, how has your energy at work been?Single choice
Five labelled points from very low to very high. Name the window or the answer drifts.
Over the last two weeks, how manageable has your workload been?Single choice
Include an unmanageable option and a too light option at the other end.
How often are you asked to do more than can be done in the time?Single choice
A frequency scale. This is the demand question, and it belongs to the employer.
How much control do you have over how you do your work?Single choice
Control is the other half of the demand question and it is often the cheaper one to change.
How often does work carry into your own time?Single choice
Rest and recovery
In a typical day, do you get an uninterrupted break?Single choice
Always through never. A plain operational question that produces an operational fix.
Do you finish a shift and sleep well that night?Single choice
Include prefer not to say. Ask about sleep after work, not about sleep in general.
How often do you think about work outside your hours in a way that bothers you?Single choice
Include prefer not to say on every question in this section.
Have you taken your annual leave this year?Single choice
All of it, most, some, none. Untaken leave is one of the few objective signals here.
When you are unwell, do you feel able to take the day?Single choice
Support at work
My roster or schedule gives me enough recovery timeRating grid
Row one of a five point agreement grid. Skippable, like every row here.
I can ask for help on a hard day without it being held against meRating grid
Row two.
My manager notices when someone is strugglingRating grid
Row three.
I would tell a friend this is a good place to workRating grid
Row four.
Which of these do you know how to access?Multiple choice
An employee assistance line, peer support, flexible hours, a confidential conversation, none of these. This measures advertising.
Have you used any of that support in the last year?Single choice
Yes, no, prefer not to say. Never ask what for.
What would help most over the next three months?Single choice
Predictable rosters, better staffing on the hard shifts, real breaks, debriefs, something else.
Anything you want the people team to understand about this year?Long text
Say in the label that colleagues and clients should not be named.
Which questions to make required
Nothing on this survey is required, and that is deliberate rather than lazy. A required question about sleep, mood or leave is a demand, and the people most worth hearing from are the ones most likely to close the tab rather than answer it. The survey is anonymous, carries no name field, and every question about rest or support offers a prefer not to say option. Support contact details belong on the thank you screen, because that is the only screen every respondent reaches.
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 workforce
A shift or clinical workforce. Rosters do more damage than workload in a hospital or a control room, so add questions about how much notice a roster change gets, how often a shift is extended, and whether there is somewhere to sit down on a night shift. Replace the annual leave question with one about whether leave requests are usually approved, which is the version that has an employer on the other end of it. A desk based workforce. Add questions about meeting load, after hours messages and whether the person can work without being interrupted, and drop the shift and recovery wording that will read as irrelevant. Keep the control question, because autonomy is the strongest single predictor in office work and the cheapest thing to change. A small team. Below about forty people no segment is safe to report, so remove the area dropdown entirely and say why on the welcome screen. Run the survey annually rather than quarterly, and pair it with a conversation, because a team that size learns more from twenty minutes of listening than from a chart with eleven responses behind it. Whatever the workforce, keep the survey away from clinical instruments and keep the helpline on the last screen.
Questions people ask
Should a workplace wellbeing survey use a clinical scale?
No. Validated instruments belong with clinicians who can interpret and act on a score. An employer survey that borrows one collects sensitive health information it is not equipped to hold, cannot respond to safely, and may be obliged to act on in ways nobody planned for. Ask about conditions instead of symptoms.
Why is nothing on the survey required?
Because a required question about sleep or mood is a demand made of someone who may be having a hard month. The completion cost of a skipped question is a slightly smaller denominator. The cost of a forced one is the respondent who abandons the survey, and they were the response that mattered.
Where should support contact details go?
On the welcome screen and on the thank you screen. The thank you screen matters most, because it is the only one every respondent reaches regardless of how much they answered. Putting the numbers only in a results email reaches nobody who needed them while the survey was open.
How often should a wellbeing survey run?
Once or twice a year for the full instrument. A quarterly version of six questions is defensible if something is actually changing between rounds. Surveying more often than you can act creates a record of unaddressed problems, which is worse than not asking and harder to explain later.
Can the results identify someone at risk?
Not if the survey is built properly, and it should not try. Anonymous aggregate answers cannot and must not be used to single out an individual. Anyone who needs help needs a person and a phone number, which is why both screens carry them and why no question asks for a name.
What should be done with the results?
Pick the two lowest scoring conditions, change one of them, and tell everyone which one you picked and why. Publishing a chart and doing nothing is the standard failure, and it teaches a workforce that the survey is a compliance exercise. Response rates in round two are the receipt for round one.
Should managers be asked the same wellbeing questions?
Yes, and then ask them two more: whether they feel equipped to support someone who is struggling, and whether they have anyone to talk to themselves. Managers absorb a great deal of a team distress and are usually the last group any wellbeing programme reaches, which shows up in their own answers.
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