10 Best Company Culture Questions for Employee Surveys

Whether you’re a startup or an established company, company culture is critical for your business. A strong and positive culture will attract and retain talented employees that put in their best effort every day. In contrast, a toxic or negative company culture is a liability that can hurt your bottom line.

Even if you have a great employee experience, no workplace is perfect. All companies need a process for evaluating their current culture and addressing potential issues. That’s where employee feedback surveys come in. Employee surveys can be a powerful tool for evaluating many different aspects of your company culture.

In this article, we'll dive into best practices for employee satisfaction surveys and share 10 sample employee engagement survey questions!

Find out how Cooleaf can help you gather actionable employee feedback

How employee feedback can improve your workplace culture

Work culture surveys can help you measure employee engagement and identify potential gaps before they start impacting employee retention. Successful company culture surveys also give you powerful insights to guide your employee engagement strategy.

Additionally, they can help you track engagement levels in specific areas like DEI, company core values, recognition, or remote team engagement — all critical components of a positive culture.

Best practices for company culture surveys

Employee feedback surveys are a great way to gauge how engaged your employees are and get their take on your company culture. While you can go long-form and design a detailed survey, it's often best to start by asking some general questions that can provide key insights into how people feel about the workplace.

When sending out your workplace culture survey, keep in mind these tips to ensure that your survey is inclusive and effective:

• Make sure your survey tool is mobile-friendly, especially if your workforce is distributed or if you have many non-desk employees who don’t regularly work in front of a desktop computer.
• Before sending, get feedback on your pulse surveys to ensure that you're asking the right questions.
• As well as multiple choice and ranking questions, include open-ended questions to allow respondents to elaborate on their answers.
• In addition to more extensive employee satisfaction or culture surveys, consider sending Employee Net Promoter (eNPS) surveys on a monthly basis. Since they consist of only 1 question, eNPS surveys typically have high participation rates, so they can help you quickly track employee loyalty and develop benchmarks for measuring culture.

‍

‍

Top 10 company culture survey questions

1. Do you have a best friend at work?

Gallup research has shown that having strong friendships at work is key to employee engagement. In a remote or hybrid workplace, having best friends at work is especially critical. Workplace friendships don’t just make day-to-day work more fun — they also lead to more effective teamwork and more trusting work environments.

2. How would you rate your familiarity with our company core values?

Your company culture should be guided by meaningful company values. But do your employees have a solid understanding of your values? If not, it’s time to rethink how you’re integrating core values into daily work. If you’re in the process of redefining your values, these questions can help you dig into your organization’s values.

3. How aligned are you with our company’s purpose?

Every workplace needs a strong purpose. A sense of purpose helps employees feel more committed to their organizations and motivates them to perform. But according to Gallup, only 4 in 10 employees feel connected to their company’s purpose.

Your purpose should inspire your people, your mission should guide your goals, and your values should be lived by employees on a daily basis. If your purpose doesn't inspire your people, it's important to understand why.

4. Do you feel recognized for your achievements?

According to Gallup research, employees who are frequently recognized are 4x as likely to be engaged and 3x as likely to feel loyal to their organization. Being frequently recognized helps employees feel their work is appreciated, and by extension, it makes them feel more valued and confident in their own abilities. Employee recognition is a critical component of a strong culture, and this question will help you measure the rate of recognition within your own organization.

5. Is peer recognition encouraged on your team?

While manager-to-peer recognition is important, peer-to-peer recognition also has a huge impact on company culture. When peers recognize one another for their achievements, it deepens the bond between team members and helps to build trust. Employees feel more connected and engaged, which ultimately helps to boost productivity.

If you already offer a recognition program, this question can help you to ensure that your team is using it effectively. If you don’t, this question can help you decide if you need one.

‍

6. How are you feeling about work/life balance at the moment?

Employee wellbeing is a key ingredient in a happy and effective workplace culture. In fact, sixty-three percent of senior HR leaders rated employee well-being and mental health as a top priority!

When it comes to tracking employee wellbeing, knowing whether or not your employees have a healthy work-life balance is a great starting point. A healthy work-life balance can help you prevent employee burnout and retain valuable team members. If your employees are feeling overwhelmed by their workloads, you can introduce employee wellbeing initiatives like company-wide wellness days or invest in employee wellbeing programs.

7. How would you rate our organization’s leadership?

In a positive workplace culture, employees trust the organization’s leadership team and believe in their ability to make the right decisions for the company. When employees trust their leaders, they’re more engaged and more invested in your business’s success.

8. Do we celebrate the diversity of ideas and people in our company?

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is a key ingredient in any positive work environment. Do your diverse team members feel celebrated on your team? This question will help you better understand your employees’ sense of belonging at your company and determine whether your DEI strategy is doing its job.

9. How satisfied are you with the learning and development opportunities in your role?

One of the most common reasons that people leave their job is because of lack of growth opportunities at work. Having room to grow and learn is a key part of job satisfaction and fulfillment. This survey question can help you identify whether or not employees feel there are adequate opportunities for growth within your organizational culture.

10. What do you love most about working here?

It’s always good to end your survey on a positive note, so in addition to asking what your company could be doing better, ask your employees what they love most about working at your company. This question can help you better understand what makes your company culture unique and identify why employees stay.

How to use your survey results

After sending your employee satisfaction survey, it’s time to analyze the results. Many employee engagement survey platforms, like Cooleaf, will allow you to filter survey data across different departments or locations. This can be particularly helpful to identify issues on specific teams, like high employee burnout or lack of inclusion.

If your company culture is below target, here are some steps you can take to improve it:

• Explore employee engagement software solutions to improve team connection
• Revisit your company’s purpose, mission, and values, and create a strategy to bring them to life within your organization
• Implement a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategy to foster DEI within your team
• Offer more learning & development opportunities at multiple levels within your company
• Foster team connection with fun employee engagement initiatives

Company culture can impact everything from employee retention to productivity. If you’re looking for better ways to drive a strong company culture and retain top talent, let’s chat!