Feedback is key for small businesses. In fact, engaged teams see up to 51 percent lower turnover than less-engaged teams, according to Gallup's largest-ever meta-analysis of workplace data.
The hard part is getting employees to actually share what they’re thinking. That’s where the employee survey comes in. An employee survey is a set of questions companies send out to their employees to collect their feedback about topics like engagement, satisfaction, management, or working conditions. The goal is to understand how employees feel and what they want the company to improve.
Here are some tactics to create employee surveys that will both increase your survey participation rate at your small business and get actionable insight from your employees.
How to create an employee survey
Curious about employee satisfaction and engagement? The easiest way to find out is to ask. Sending out a regular employee experience survey (also known as a pulse survey) a couple times a year can help you gauge employee sentiment and track how it changes over time.
Before you settle on specific questions, decide on your mix of question types. Multiple-choice and rating-scale questions are quick to answer and easy to quantify and benchmark over time, so they should make up the bulk of your survey. Open-ended questions take longer to answer and analyze, but they can reveal the “why” behind a low score and often catch issues you wouldn't have thought to ask about directly. A good rule of thumb is to lean on multiple-choice questions to keep completion time short, and add one or two open-ended questions at the end of each survey to capture more nuance.
Which questions to include in your employee engagement survey
An effective employee engagement survey asks questions that reliably predict job satisfaction. These are broadly distributed into topics like:
Teamwork: Your employees should feel like they are treated fairly, have clear roles and responsibilities, and are considered a part of the team. These factors not only signify employee morale and satisfaction—they also point to any potential problems with work-life balance, workplace culture, and future issues with employee retention.
Management: Do your employees feel well-managed by their boss? Can they talk to their manager about any issues they’re experiencing? Questions around manager effectiveness can help you spot any potential issues and coach managers to improve.
Autonomy and ownership: Your employees should feel like they have the right tools, environment, and level of autonomy to do their jobs well. If they don’t, you’ll want to look into how you can help them be better equipped to do great work.
Recognition and performance: Recognition is undeniably linked to employee satisfaction. It’s equally important for employees to receive the right level of feedback when their work is lacking as it is to receive recognition when doing an outstanding job.
Learning and growth: Do your employees feel like they’re given regular professional development opportunities? Do they feel like they can grow their career at your company? Have they received a clear roadmap for how they can advance their career? If not, you may be facing satisfaction and retention issues down the road.
Morale and retention: You should be building a future for your company that your employees believe in. If not, morale and retention can suffer irreparable damage. Be sure to ask questions about your employees’ overall feelings towards the company’s products, goals, and future.
Benefits: Employee sentiment around PTO and benefits are important to keep an eye on. This is one category where competitors often win when employees go job hunting, so it’s best to catch any trends early and see what you can address.
One number worth layering on top of these topics is your Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS). It comes from a single question: “How likely are you to recommend [Company] as a place to work, on a scale of 0–10?”. Your score is the percentage of promoters (9–10) minus the percentage of detractors (0–6), landing anywhere from -100 to 100. Because it's just one question, it's easy to include in every survey and track over time, giving you a quick pulse to watch between the deeper topic-by-topic surveys.
Actually creating a survey is easy. If you’re on a Gusto Plus or Premium plan, you can simply turn on Team Insights to send a short survey to all US employees, once a month.
Tips for getting great employee feedback
1. Communicate the importance of giving feedback
Let your team know that their feedback is critical to improving the workplace and making their voices heard. Reach out to them on the day the employee satisfaction survey launches and ask for their help in giving feedback. Explain what exactly what will be done with the insights—along with a timeline for what will happen after the survey wraps up.
It’s also important to send reminders to folks who haven’t filled it out. Many survey programs do this automatically, but you can also do it the old-fashioned way—through email, Slack, or in a team meeting.
2. Emphasize that responses will be confidential
Some people may feel uncomfortable giving critical feedback about their jobs. In fact, staying anonymous is usually one of the top concerns employees have while filling out a survey.
If you use Gusto, remind them that their feedback is completely anonymous. Or be sure to find a program that allows you to aggregate responses in a similar way.
3. Lead by example
When you submit your own survey response, send a note to the team that you’ve completed it and encourage others to do the same. Give your team a specific date for when you want responses in so they can plan ahead.
Use Slack, email, or whatever office communication tool your team prefers. This is quick, easy, and helps motivate others to respond.
4. Share your completion rate and set targets
Share previous participation and completion rates with your team and set targets for upcoming surveys.
While some companies boast participation rates above 90 percent, 70-80 percent is a good target that allows you to hear from most of your team. If participation is flagging, it may point to survey fatigue. In this scenario, you might want to look at editing the length or frequency of your surveys.
5. Create an action plan
Once you have results, share them with your decision makers and senior team members first.
It’s useful to benchmark results by comparing the data with previous results (Your eNPS, for example, is a great anchor to track over time). Then, you can determine what areas you want to focus on improving. Building a concrete action plan is one of the best ways to turn feedback into real change.
6. Share results and action plans with employees
Sharing results and action plans with employees shows a commitment to improvement and is a powerful motivator for getting employees to participate.
Remember to not let the results lead to finger-pointing, which can discourage your team from responding in the future.
7. Make your employees feel like they’re part of the solution
Your employees are a great source of ideas, so do what you can to help them feel a sense of ownership over the results.
Use the survey insights as conversation starters, and set up opportunities for two-way communication that covers the issues you want to explore more. These conversations are best done in small groups—typically six to seven—where employees feel comfortable sharing ideas.
Consider planning a team offsite to really dig into some of the areas covered in the survey.
8. Celebrate your wins
Share improvements with your team and tie them back to previous actions you’ve taken. This creates a strong reinforcing cycle that can do wonders for your workplace.
Then, celebrate your company successes with treats for the team—cookies, bagels, or ice cream are all solid options.
Ready to get your feedback engine started? Write your survey, follow the tips above, and watch as your participation rate soars.
Quick note: This is not to be taken as tax, legal, benefits, financial, or HR advice. Since rules and regulations change over time and can vary by location, consult a lawyer or HR expert for specific guidance.
FAQs
What is a good employee survey participation rate to aim for?
Aim for 70 to 80 percent participation, which is high enough that results feel representative of your whole team. If participation starts dropping, treat it as a signal to check whether your surveys are too long, not relevant enough, or too frequent.
What topics should an employee engagement survey cover?
Effective employee surveys cover topics like teamwork, management, autonomy and ownership, recognition and performance, learning and growth, morale and retention, and benefits. These categories track the factors that most reliably predict job satisfaction and surface early warning signs around culture, manager effectiveness, or retention risk.
How often should you send employee pulse surveys?
Many small businesses send short pulse surveys monthly. Gusto's Team Insights tool, for example, automatically emails a brief survey to employees once a month. A consistent monthly cadence makes it easier to track sentiment trends over time.
How can you get employees to actually respond to a survey?
Employees respond more when they understand why their feedback matters, trust that responses are confidential, and see leadership complete the survey first. Sharing past participation rates, setting a clear response deadline, and reminding non-respondents also help. Your employees also want to know that their feedback will be addressed, so following through with a visible action plan after each survey builds the trust needed for future rounds.
What should you do with employee survey results once they come in?
Share results with decision-makers first, then benchmark them against previous survey data to spot trends and prioritize what to act on. Build a concrete action plan, communicate it to the full team, and avoid letting results turn into finger-pointing at individuals or teams. Closing the loop this way encourages stronger participation next time.
