17 Proactive Employee Engagement Survey Templates for Collecting Feedback at Scale

In a perfect world, unhappy employees will walk right up to HR and bare their hearts. They won't "quiet quit" or check out mentally.

And they definitely won't start looking for a new job and holding their breath until they can tender the resignation letter sitting in their email drafts.

Unfortunately, things rarely work this way in our world, so it's your duty as a team leader or HR Manager to go to your employees and find out how they feel and what you can do to make a difference in their work experiences.

Cue employee engagement surveys. 

But how do you go about creating surveys? How do you design and structure it? What kind of questions should you be asking?

In this post, you'll find a variety of employee engagement survey templates you can use to dig into the motivations and challenges influencing your people's satisfaction and happiness.

📝 17 Employee engagement survey templates

Are you ready to dig into your employees' needs and gain insights on optimizing your employee experience to boost satisfaction, talent retention, career development, and organizational culture?

Use these employee engagement survey templates to get started. 

1. Employee engagement survey for small companies

What this template includes: This template features 8 rating and 2 open-ended questions to help you learn more about the general mood of your employees towards the company, their teams, and their jobs.

When to use it: Since you don't have many employees, you can use your engagement survey to check in with your people and monitor how they're feeling monthly or bi-monthly.

Why it matters: It's easy to fall under the misconception that your team is one happy family with no tensions or problems simmering under the surface. You need to be intentional about investigating potential concerns to address them immediately. 

2. Yearly employee engagement survey template 

What this template includes: You'll find a list of 16 rating questions with an opinion scale so employees can rate how they feel about different engagement factors, such as their commitment and how likely they are to promote the company.

When to use it: Save this survey for your annual end-of-year reviews to unearth high-level concerns you might have missed during the year.

Why it matters: Knowing how connected and enthusiastic your employees feel about the company is crucial to setting goals, as well as planning your team building, project management, and productivity approach for the coming year.

It'll also help you decipher whether the engagement strategies you implemented in response to the more detailed and specific surveys you conducted throughout the year have made a difference. 

3. Remote work survey template

What this template includes: This template for surveying remote workers consists of a mix of 16 rating and open-ended questions to help you collect information on the following work-from-home elements: 

• onboarding;
• wellness;
• benefits;
• connectedness;
• manager support;
• technology and tools;
• learning and development;
• performance.

When to use it: Send this survey to new remote hires or existing hires who have recently transitioned to telecommuting after their first month of working from home and repeat the survey quarterly or every six months.

Why it matters: According to Stephen Baldwin, HR Manager at Assisted Living, "Working from home encourages feelings of isolation and disconnect from colleagues. Without deliberate efforts from HR teams, it is easy for employees to begin feeling unmotivated to perform in the virtual workplace."

Surveys give your remote workers a chance to communicate their issues so you can provide them with the support they need to grow, succeed, remain engaged, and align with the rest of the team.

If you want a more official-looking template with a mix of question types, check out Zavvy's fully-automated WFH/Remote feedback survey template.

4. Employee pulse survey template 

What this template includes: Keep a finger on the pulse of your employee's well-being, attitudes, and engagement with this easy-to-complete survey. Because of the concise nature of employee pulse surveys, the template only features closed questions with a rating scale.

When to use it: The beauty of this template is that we designed it to be used regularly without seeming like a chore on both the administrative and employee end, so don't hesitate to send it out weekly or every two weeks.

Why it matters: You shouldn't have to wait for quarterly or annual reviews to roll around before asking your team for feedback because, by then, it might be too late to keep people from leaving, and the issues might no longer be an easy fix.

Pulse surveys enable you to check in with your team in real-time so you can solve employee challenges as they arise.

5. Exit survey template

What this template includes: This template comes with a mix of open and closed questions that give former employees a chance to explain their reason for leaving and share what they think about the training, benefits, salary, management, culture, and job satisfaction offered by your company.

When to use it: Unlike most other templates on this list, which you can use at varying intervals and occasions, you should only use your exit survey whenever an employee announces their intention to leave your organization. 

Why it matters: Surveying team members who resign will help you identify the factors motivating attrition, what you're getting right, and where you need to improve your organizational climate. Also, departing employees will have less desire or reasons to coddle you, so you're more likely to get honest, unimpeachable feedback. 

6. Candidate experience survey template

What this template includes: This template has 15 multiple-choice, rating, and open-ended questions for applicants to evaluate different aspects of your talent acquisition process, such as the recruiter, role clarity, length of the process, interview preparedness, and more.

When to use it: The best time to break out a candidate experience survey is after you round up your hiring process. Think 24-48 hours after sending out an offer letter to the successful candidate and rejection letters to candidates who made it to the final round. 

Why it matters: Your hiring process can make or mar how applicants perceive your brand. It can influence their decision to:

• Continue to the next phase.
• Accept or reject your offer.
• Apply again in the future.
• Encourage others to apply.
• Spread positive or negative word of mouth about your business.

Who better to help you pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of your recruitment process than the job seekers who have experienced it firsthand?

7. Onboarding survey template

What this template includes: This template features a mix of multiple choice and 5-answer Likert scale questions types to help you measure the effectiveness of your onboarding process based on the following criteria:

• candidate experience;
• employer brand;
• onboarding experience;
• role clarity;
• training;
• alignment;
• culture, and more. 

When to use it: The right time to send out a new-hire onboarding survey will depend on the length of your onboarding process. But ideally, you should do so within the first three months of them joining the team.

You can even break down the survey questions into different parts and send them out weekly based on the phase of the onboarding journey the employee is in.

Why it matters: The strength of your employee onboarding program will determine:

• How quickly new hires become productive.
• How well they acclimate to the new work environment.
• How long they will stick around your company.

Understanding how your process is performing will enable you to create an onboarding experience that will help future hires feel welcomed and supported and allow them to thrive.

If you want a more official-looking template with a mix of question types, check out Zavvy's fully- automated onboarding survey template.

8. Employee job satisfaction survey template

What this template includes: A comprehensive set of 30 work-related statements and questions to help you determine how your employees feel about their jobs and work environment. It incorporates different question types, including open, closed, ratings, and multiple choice.

When to use it: Consider using this template to measure employee job satisfaction levels across the board every quarter. 

Why it matters: According to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace: 2022 Report, businesses with engaged and happy workers report 23% higher profits than businesses with miserable workers. Also, dissatisfied and actively disengaged workers cost the world $7.8 trillion in lost productivity. 

"Surveying your employees regularly will help you identify issues of isolation and potential burnout and solve them before they get out of hand.

You can use the feedback collected to lighten workload when needed, or on the contrary, assign more complex and stimulating projects, and continuously optimize your management practices to maintain high levels of employee happiness." Catherine Maheux-Rochette, Digital Marketing Director and Manager at Folks, an HR solutions provider.

9. Employee well-being survey 

What this template includes: This employee well-being survey template contains 17 scientifically validated ratings and open-ended questions.  

When to use it: We recommend conducting a monthly well-being survey to see where your employees' heads are. However, if you run a large organization, you might be better off with quarterly well-being surveys. The latter approach will give you more time to analyze feedback and enact change.

Why it matters: By conducting regular well-being surveys, your organization can gain specific insights about underlying issues that might be causing stress, anxiety, and depression for your workforce. Armed with this feedback, you can make data-driven decisions to better support your employee's mental, physical, and financial well-being, ultimately increasing their dedication to their work. 

10. Employee retention survey

What this template includes: In this template, you'll find a healthy mix of 25 open and closed/rating question types that touch on various aspects of the employee experience that could impact turnover, such as:

• compensation;
• commitment level;
• feelings about leadership and management;
• thoughts about professional development and accomplishments.

When to use it: The key is to strike a balance between communicating regularly with your employees and not overwhelming them with your surveys. Carrying out your retention surveys quarterly or twice yearly is a good workaround.

Why it matters: Don't wait until your employees walk out the door to discover they're unhappy and what you could have done to make them say. Conduct retention surveys to predict employee churn and take action to improve your employer brand and re-engage dissatisfied team members before it's too late.

11. Employee culture survey

What this template includes: This survey consists of 25 statements and questions in rating scale and open-ended styles examining different aspects of your company culture to determine how they impact your workforce for better or worse.

When to use it: Carry out culture surveys at least once a year to get a clear picture of the health of your company climate and ensure that you're cultivating an environment that your workers are proud and content to be a part of.

Why it matters: Every organization swears they have a great culture, but the realities on the ground don't always live up to these declarations. If you're serious about growing and keeping your team happy and productive, you must dig below the surface to understand how your employees truly feel about their work environment. 

12. Diversity survey template

What this template includes: Get access to 15 questions that require employees to submit both ratings and long text answers on different diversity and inclusion indexes:

• Overall attitudes toward diversity 
• Access to opportunities 
• Discrimination and harassment 

When to use it: We recommend that you conduct diversity surveys once or twice a year to find out whether you're doing a great job of creating an environment where every employee feels welcomed and respected regardless of gender, ethnicity, set, race, religion, or disability. 

Why it matters: According to the International Labour Organization's 2022 Diversity and inclusion report, high levels of equality, diversity, and inclusion lead to greater productivity, innovation, performance, retention, talent recruitment, and workforce well-being. 

Measuring workplace diversity and taking action to improve in areas where you fall short will enable your company to unlock these benefits. 

➡️ Download the diversity survey template.

13. Confidence survey 

What this template includes: This template houses nine open and closed/rating questions designed to reveal how employee morale is faring and the level of confidence team members have in your organization's vision and future.

When to use it: Send out confidence surveys annually or whenever your organization undergoes significant changes to understand how policies and decisions shape the company's perception in employees' eyes.

Why it matters: Employees who believe in the work they do and the company they do it for will invest more effort into solving problems and achieving positive business outcomes. Knowing what drives or negatively impacts employee confidence will allow you to formulate effective engagement plans to restore morale.

➡️ Get the confidence survey template.

14. Automated employee engagement survey 

What this template includes: 10 essential questions to collect honest and anonymous feedback from your people about well-being, management, growth, and alignment.

When to use it: Since this is an automated employee engagement survey, you can set up the recurrency and then let it run month-in-month-out. 

However, we recommend being aware that running too many surveys can lead to survey fatigue and decreased participation rates, which can compromise the validity and usefulness of the collected data.

"If you’re rolling out surveys more than once every six months, you’re doing it wrong. [...] It takes at least 6 months to make meaningful change. And no, I’m not exaggerating. You need time to explore underlying issues, get alignment on an action plan, execute on that plan, and then give it time to (hopefully) work. Rolling out a survey with less than 6 months between each iteration means you won’t give yourself enough time to succeed — and your employees are going to notice." Melanie Naranjo, VP of People at Ethena. 

Why it matters: Setting up and running recurring engagement surveys only takes a few clicks. Most importantly, this template collects feedback anonymously, so your employees should not worry about retaliation and feel empowered to speak their minds.

15. Inclusion survey (Inspired by Microsoft)

Bonus templates

Employee engagement survey invitations

You can't just share a link to your engagement survey and hope for the best. 

You have to take the time to craft an engaging email with a catchy subject line, informative supporting text, and a compelling call to action that will entice employees to open, click through, and participate in your survey.

Otherwise, you might end up with a poor response rate, signaling that your employee engagement is low and desperately needs fixing.

Knowing how to optimize your survey invitation emails will help boost response rates and provide a more varied and balanced analysis of your employee experience. 

➡️ Check out these employee engagement survey invitation email examples.

Employee engagement survey results presentation template

What this template includes: This template hosts essential information such as your organization's mission and vision statements, key workforce statistics, and key drivers of engagement that your surveys set out to measure. It also presents the survey's overall results, including the level of employee engagement and satisfaction, as well as the areas where the organization is performing well and where there is room for improvement. We also included some exemplary action items, focusing on training & development initiatives.

When to use it: You can use this template after each employee engagement survey to track progress and measure improvements over time.

Why it matters: Using an employee engagement survey results presentation template provides a structured and consistent way to communicate the survey results to all your stakeholders. It allows you to celebrate your successes and identify areas for improvement. It also helps build trust and transparency between employees and the organization, as they can see that their feedback has been heard and acted upon. Finally, it provides a roadmap for managers and leaders to take specific action to address employee concerns and improve engagement levels.

Employee engagement action plan template

Now that you've completed your surveys, it's time to show your employees that they're not speaking into the void when they share feedback with you.

The next step is determining how you will increase engagement and address the issues they've raised. 

In practice, you have to devise an action plan targeting specific engagement concerns based on the data you've collected. 

➡️ Learn how to create an engagement action plan that works. Get a headstart with our template.

Employee engagement program 

Companies with happy and highly engaged workers don't treat engagement as an afterthought. It's not something that they only care about when review season rolls around.

They continuously devise and implement strategies to support their employees and make their lives better. How?

By creating engagement programs focused on identifying and eliminating problems standing in the way of employee satisfaction and alignment. 

So borrow a page from their book if you're serious about taking your people's engagement to the next level.

➡️ Learn how to develop a larger employee engagement program.

🕵️‍♀️ Why use an employee engagement survey template?

An employee engagement survey template is a tool that helps you ensure you're asking the right questions and using the best possible methods to collect feedback from your team members.

By using survey templates to measure employee engagement levels, you can: 

1. Gauge employee sentiment

Employee engagement survey templates feature pre-selected questions to help you get an accurate picture of your people's frustrations and the policies benefitting them. 

They allow you to tap into the collective voices of your workforce to deduce the aspects of your employee experience and company culture where you can make improvements.

2. Save valuable time

Figuring out how satisfied and motivated your employees feel can eat up huge chunks of time. Especially if it's your first swing at measuring engagement. 

Instead of spending days or weeks going back and forth over where to begin or what questions to ask, you can let a template do all the heavy lifting for you. So you can redirect your attention to tasks that substantially impact business outcomes, like building effective employee engagement programs. 

3. Provide a structured foundation for your survey efforts 

Templates make the employee engagement survey process less confusing for less experienced team leaders and HR managers by offering a clear starting point and boundaries that you work from or build around to achieve the results you want.

They also help to create a unified system for collecting engagement data so that you can: 

• Easily analyze feedback. 
• Account for changes in survey results. 
• Tie outcomes back to your engagement strategies.

4. Build a happier and more productive workforce

Team members who feel respected, heard, happy, and satisfied with their jobs will be motivated to give their best to their work. 

But feelings are constantly evolving. So the fact that your employees are engaged and inspired this month doesn't mean they'll feel that way the rest of the year.

As a result, you need to keep taking the temperature of the workplace regularly via surveys to get a sense of where things stand and take action to drive engagement back up when it seems to be crashing. 

➡️ Empower every voice with Zavvy's tailored surveys

Engagement surveys are critical to unearthing information about your organization's strengths and weaknesses from the viewpoint of those who deal with them daily. 

But you'll be playing catch-up for a long time without the right tools backing your efforts.

Zavvy's fully automated employee engagement software makes collecting feedback and developing your workforce a breeze. 

We can help you:

• Plan, design, launch, share, manage, and analyze feedback surveys on auto-pilot. 
• Save time on repetitive processes and administrative tasks.
• Track key engagement metrics over time.
• Protect employee data, privacy, and anonymity.
• Create development plans, run training programs, optimize onboarding, and provide clarity via career frameworks to meet employee engagement needs.
• Access strategic consultations with learning specialists to design and implement successful people development strategies. 

Interested in leveraging automation and data to power your engagement workflows and build outstanding people experiences? 

📅 Book a free demo to see how Zavvy can help.