Employee pulse survey questions that a small team can answer in two minutes

A pulse survey is a few questions, asked often, so you hear about problems while they are small. On a team of twenty, the hard part is making people believe it is anonymous. These questions and rules are built around that.

The short version

If you only ask five questions, ask these.

A larger bank to pull from

Pick three to six per survey and rotate. Statements use a 1 to 5 agreement scale.

Keeping it anonymous on a small team

In a company of fifteen, a comment that mentions the Tuesday release is not anonymous, whatever the tool says. A few rules help.

• Do not ask for demographics. Department, tenure and location split a small group into pieces that identify people. Skip them.
• Hold results until enough people have answered. We hide results until at least three people respond. More is better, and with fewer than about eight on a team you should treat every comment as potentially identifiable.
• Shuffle comments. Reading them in the order they arrived invites guessing who wrote what.
• Keep the list of who answered separate from the answers. It is fine to know who has not responded yet. It is not fine to link a person to a response.
• Tell people what you will do with it. Say in the invitation who sees results and when.

How often

Monthly is plenty for a small team, and quarterly is fine. Weekly surveys tire people out and the numbers barely move. Whatever you pick, stick to it, because trends are more useful than any single result. For the first survey, expect a few people to hold back. It gets easier after they see you act on something.

What to do with the results

Within a week, share the headline numbers with the team, name the one or two things you will act on, and say what you will not act on and why. Then do the things. A survey followed by silence does more harm than no survey.

If you use the 0 to 10 recommend question, our guide to eNPS explains how to read the number on a small team.

Wording tips

• Ask about one thing at a time. "My manager communicates clearly and recognizes my work" is two questions, and nobody knows which one they are answering.
• Describe things people can observe. "I know what is expected of me this month" is easier to answer honestly than "I feel aligned".
• Keep the scale the same across questions, so people do not have to stop and re-read it.
• Put the written question last. People are more willing to write a comment after they have already answered a few quick ones.

A sample monthly rotation

Keep the recommend question and one written question in every survey, and rotate the rest so no one answers the same list twelve times a year.

• Month 1: workload and clarity.
• Month 2: management and communication.
• Month 3: growth and recognition, then review the quarter's results together.