How (& Why) to Effectively Survey Remote Workers | 41 Questions Included

In a survey by Paychex, 55% of remote workers reported their companies did not update the benefits package when they switched to remote work. As a result, it had a direct impact on employee retention. 

Losing talent, hiring, and onboarding comes with an additional cost. 

A solution to this problem? Listen to your employees.

Surveys are a great way to lend an ear, especially for a distributed workforce. 

If you're not surveying your remote workers, you're already lagging behind.

Don't know where to start?

We break down how you can survey your remote workers. We also included 41 survey questions you can ask your remote workforce immediately.

🔄 What are surveys for remote workers?

Remote work comes with its own set of challenges: loneliness, difficulties in communication, and feeling disconnected, to name a few. All of these directly impact employee engagement. 

Your traditional surveys might not fully cover remote employees' needs. 

Therefore, it's essential to specifically craft surveys for them according to their work environment and challenges like WFH setup, connectivity, etc. 

These survey results can give you a roadmap to enable remote employees to perform at their best. 

➡️ Discover the latest hybrid and remote work statistics to understand changing work trends before drafting your survey.

👀 7 Reasons why you should survey remote workers

Surveys are a way to say you care. It is also fodder for change. But these two reasons are at a very high level. 

So let's look at the core of why surveying remote employees is important.

Give remote employees a voice

When employees are at the office, it is easy to walk up to the manager or HR desk and discuss issues. However, one loses that privilege in a remote work environment. These surveys are a chance to make them feel heard. And also give a voice to employees facing difficulties in communicating their issues. 

Assess the organizational climate

The success of any organization depends on how employees feel about their jobs.

Do they feel connected to the company's vision?

Are they aligned with the team?

Are they getting needed support from their supervisor?

Surveys are a way to peek into their heads and assess what's going well (and what's going wrong).

Find specific challenges of remote work 

Remote work isn't as cool as shown on social media. It's not working from a cafe sipping iced tea but sitting in pajamas and panicking if the dinner in the microwave would have burnt in the middle of an extended Zoom call.

There are many other issues (than burnt lasagne, of course) like tech hiccups, communications gaps, poor work-life balance, etc. But, again, surveys can get you a list of burning issues.

Gauge engagement 

If there is one metric that you must track, then it's employee engagement. It has a huge impact on revenue and profits. 

In fact, Gallup's State of global workforce 2022 report showcased that business units with engaged workers had 23% higher profits. Find your current engagement level with a survey. 

➡️ Need ideas for engaging your remote workforce? Check out these 47 unique ideas for engaging remote employees.

Ensure team alignment 

In a remote or hybrid workforce, it's easy for individuals to start working in isolation. Surveys can help you assess if employees feel connected to their team goals and the company's vision.  

Enable change

Different companies keep offering new perks or trying engagement ideas to keep their employees engaged.

But you can easily fall into the trap of copying trends. 

Survey data helps you bring a systematic change based on your employees' needs.

Assist the learning process

Growth stops when learning stops. 

Do employees have the required skills?

Are they in need of any training?

Are remote managers trained to lead the team?

Find the gaps based on survey results and decide on future learning investments.

💡 7-Step strategy to conduct a remote work survey

1. Set a goal

The first step is to define the bigger goal. What parameters do you plan to measure in the survey? A few examples are remote connectivity, remote well-being, and manager support. Get an exhaustive list of what to measure in a remote work survey later in the article.  

Tip: "When deciding on a topic, ask yourself these questions:

a. Do you have the capacity and resources to respond and take action on the survey results?


b. Will you be able to follow up with employees about specific grievances or concerns?" Kathryn Boudreau, Remote. Operations Manager, Callersmart.

2. Choose a survey method

The next step is to define the appropriate survey method. Three commonly used methods are one-to-one meetings, evaluation forms, and pulse surveys. More on this later.

Tip: "It's important first to understand the role of the worker receiving the survey before deciding on the survey method.

Like for frontline workers, it needs to be simple and quick and something they could respond to easily on their mobile device on the go." Sara Sheehan, Executive Coach. 

3. Decide survey questions

Curate questions based on your goals like WFH setup, well-being, etc. A good mix of multiple choice questions and open-ended questions(where employees can input details in depth) will give you a broad overview of employee experience. 

Tip: "Lengthy surveys are a no-go. Remote workers value time-efficient tasks, and when they see a 3-pages long performance survey, they won't be eager to complete them. The longest survey we made was completed only by roughly 70% of the employees.

This was one hell of a wake-up call and a good learning experience. We made sure future surveys could be completed in less than 5 minutes. The numbers went up and have since stayed at a comfortable ~90%. " Maciek Kubiak, Head of People, PhotoAiD.

4. Decide a platform and create the survey

One usual survey practice is using excel to gather information. But excels are messy and time-consuming. With a remote team, it can get even more chaotic. 

HR creating spreadsheets and manually sending them to everyone is a lot of back and forth. Also, spreadsheets aren't easier to share either. So, decide on a survey platform, such as Zavvy, based on below three factors:

• Ease of creation;
• Integrations for easy distribution like Teams or Slack;
• Ability to track, view, analyze and share results easily.

Tip: "My top recommendation is to use a technology that provides employee anonymity. Your data will only be as good as each participant's willingness to share their experience, and we've found that anonymizing the data is the best way to get this result." Michael Alexis, CEO, Teambuilding.

5. Distribute the survey

Distributing surveys is tricky. 

You need to consider the availability, time zones, and working hours of your remote workers. 

So, first, schedule the survey. Then share on the communication channels where the employee is most active, like Slack or Teams. 

Tip: "It's important to offer some sort of incentive for taking the survey- whether it's a gift card, extra vacation days, or simply a thank you note. This will show your employees that their feedback is valued and will encourage them to fill out future surveys.

For longer surveys, we provide incentives such as a self-care kit from Etsy and $25 Amazon Gift Cards." Will Yang, Head of Growth at Instrumentl.

6. Build an action plan

After you have the survey results, it's time to dig deeper and find areas of improvement and possible solutions. Further, you can lay out this information into an action plan based on priority with task owners and a potential timeline. 

Tip: "Take time to understand the survey results. Sometimes it can be hard to understand what employees meant when they responded to a survey result.

For example, perhaps fewer than half of the employees said they feel they're not using their skills and talents to their full potential. You can go back to employees via one-on-one meetings or focus groups on understanding what's behind that and what would fix it." Murray Chapman, Practice Leader, Insync.

7. Share results and action plan

Employees need to know that you actually heard them. And the survey wasn't just one routine task. 

So, share the results and action plan to boost employee morale.

Tip: As the action plan will take time to refine, you can send the initial results first. Later, you can share another email with the following steps when you have the action plan ready.

🔍 What to measure in an employee survey for remote teams?

There are many factors to measure in a remote working survey; we'll focus on nine major aspects.

✈️ Onboarding 

Are you/your team welcoming employees the right way?

Tip: Find it out with an onboarding survey.

🧘 Wellness

Remote work makes it easy to fall into the trap of overwork with blurred lines between office and work. You need to know how it affects employee wellness.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Connectedness

Are employees connecting with other employees or working in isolation? Research by Cigna shows that lonely employees have lower productivity, higher risk of turnover, more missed days at work, and lower work quality.

⚒️ Technology & Tools

Technology plays a huge role in remote collaboration. So make sure to check if remote employees have the proper setup.

💼 Manager support

Are employees getting the right kind of support and input from their managers? 

🧰 Management readiness 

Do the managers feel equipped enough (tech and process-wise) to handle a remote team?

🌱 Learning and development

Working remotely also means employees worrying if they are on the right path or doing enough. Learning and development are important topics to investigate. 

🏅 Benefits

Employee benefits are also a key to job satisfaction. Are current perks and benefits keeping the employees happy? A benefits survey helps to know their expectations.

📈 Performance

Do employees feel productive, or does remote work impact their performance? 

💻 3 Methods to conduct remote work surveys 

1. One-on-one meetings 

One-on-one meetings are check-ins between managers and their team members. It is a regular meeting to: 

• Know progress;
• Understand each other's concerns;
• Resolve issues;
• Share feedback;
• Getting to know each other.

It is easy to carry out surveys in a one-to-one format, especially in a smaller team with a good comfort level between employees and their supervisor/HR collecting details.

2. Employee evaluation forms 

Employee evaluation forms are a traditional method of collecting employee insights. 

This format is less conversational and more formal, where employees rate various factors. 

But evaluation forms do not allow for qualitative input from the employees, and rating a few factors from 1 to 5 might simply be insufficient.

Another criticism is that it can be a one-sided conversation between employee and manager or manager and employee.

Tip: By using a 360-degree survey, you can collect feedback from all counterparts: employees, managers, peers, and customers to get well-rounded feedback.

3. Pulse surveys

Going by the name, pulse surveys check the pulse of the organization. It is a more conversational and regular set of questions sent to employees. 

Some sample questions include:

I have manageable stress at work.

I feel connected to the company's vision.

❓41 Survey questions to ask your remote workers

✈️ Onboarding 

• How would you rate the onboarding process on a scale of 1 to 10?
• Do you have enough details to get started at work?
• Are the company policies clear to you?
• What is the biggest obstacle you have encountered at work so far?
• What did you not like about the onboarding process?
• What changes would you like to see in the onboarding process? 

🧘 Wellness

• Do you have a good work-life balance?
• Do you take regular breaks?
• What is your biggest remote work struggle?
• Do the company's policies/benefits support you in taking care of your physical and mental health?
• What else can we do to improve your remote work experience?

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Connectedness

• Do you feel connected to the company's mission and vision?
• Do you feel included in team decisions?
• Is there adequate communication between you and your manager?
• Do you find it easy to reach out to your team members?
• What can we do to improve the overall communication process?

⚒️ Technology & Tools

• Do you have the proper physical setup to complete your work?
• Are the remote tools provided enough for collaborating and communicating with the team?
• Are there any changes you propose (hardware or software) that can ease your daily work?

💼 Manager support

• Do you have regular check-ins with your manager?
• Does your manager trust you with work and help you take charge of it?
• Are you getting constructive feedback to pave your career path and achieve your goals?

🧰 Management readiness

• Are the WFH policies clear?
• Do you have the right tools to communicate regularly with your team members?
• What issues do you face in managing a remote team?
• If we conduct a webinar on managing a remote team, which topic would you want us to cover?

🌱 Learning and development

• Is your current work helping to sharpen your professional skills?
• Do you see enough opportunities to reach your full potential at our organization?
• Do you have a mentor at work?
• Would you like to be a part of a mentorship program?
• Are we providing enough training for your professional growth?
• What additional training would you want us to plan?

🏅 Benefits

• Are you satisfied with your current PTO amount?
• How would you rate the health insurance policy? 
• Are you getting enough time-offs?
• Which of our employee benefits is no longer relevant to you?
• What other benefits do you expect?

📈 Performance

• Are your work plan and expected output clearly laid out?     
• Do you feel productive working from home? 
• Are you able to focus and minimize distractions while working from home?
• State the top three remote work challenges that affect your daily work outcome.

📝 Work from home survey template 

In the above section, we saw all the major questions to ask in a survey(category-wise). Now, for a general WFH survey, we will pick important questions touching on all categories.

• Do you have the right physical setup to complete your work?
• Are the tools provided enough for collaborating and communicating with the remote team?
• Do you have regular check-ins with your manager?
• Do you have a good work-life balance?
• What other benefits do you expect?
• Do you find it easy to reach out to your team members?
• Do you lack any hardware or software that can ease your daily work?
• State the top three remote work challenges that affect your daily work outcome.

➡️ Enable your remote and hybrid workforce with Zavvy 

Throwing in a cliche but a true line: Remote work and hybrid model is the future. 

You need a tool/platform to measure what's working (and what's not) and enable remote employees to reach their highest potential.

Zavvy can help you:

• 🚀 Provide the right kind of onboarding to remote employees.
• 💪 Plan employee training to assist the learning process.
• 📅 Run manager training on leading remote teams.
• 🔄 Create and distribute surveys with ease.
• 👥 Keep the remote team together through various connection programs.

Get an all-in-one solution. Book a call with one of our experts today!