Employee Engagement Survey Template
Four documents and five sheets, including a question bank where every question carries the decision it would change and the person who owns that decision.
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Three gates, all closed before launch
What a question list has no way to decide
Marloe Logistics, fictional 240-person warehouse software company, 28 teams across 6 departments. FY26 round, threshold set 10 February.
Gate one. Does anybody act on the answer
Every question is paired with the decision it would change and the person who owns that decision, and the pairing happens before the question is asked. Sixty-two were drafted and twenty-four survived. Those twenty-four resolve to nineteen decisions held by nine people, and one of the nine owns six of them, which is a queue worth seeing in February rather than in July.
Eleven keep last round’s wording exactly, so eleven carry a trend line and thirteen begin one.
Gate two. Will the report you promised exist
The threshold is five responses rather than five people, and the map is computed from the org chart before any invitation goes out. Ten cuts were asked for: five exist, two exist in part, three do not exist at all.
| Cut requested | Cells | Headcount forecast | Reportable at close | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Department, location, level, tenure, manager or IC | 19 | 19 | 19 | Exists |
| Team | 28 | 20 | 16 | In part |
| Gender | 3 | 2 | 2 | In part |
| Team crossed with level, tenure or gender | 220 | 8 | 4 | Does not exist |
Headcount said twenty teams would get their own report. Responses said sixteen, and two of the four shortfalls were a single answer away.
Gate three. What happened to the last set of promises
Fourteen commitments were made after last round. Five were delivered, four are still live, five were dropped, and none of the five drops was mentioned to the people who had been promised it. Split this year’s participation by that status and one company figure separates into three.
| Group | Teams | People | Last round | This round | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Commitment delivered or live | 9 | 113 | 78% | 86% | +8 |
| Commitment dropped in silence | 5 | 56 | 84% | 52% | -32 |
| No commitment made | 14 | 71 | 83% | 73% | -10 |
| Company | 28 | 240 | 81% | 74% | -7 |
The five teams that fell to 52 percent answered at 84 the year before, six points clear of the teams that have since climbed to 86. Not one of these three gates can be closed by a question list, because each of them needs your org chart, your decision-makers, or your own record of what you promised.
An engagement survey template is a list of questions, and a list of questions is a list of things somebody would like to know. This pack builds the bank backwards. Every question carries the decision it would change and the named person who owns that decision, filled in before it is asked, and anything with neither gets cut. A 62-question draft came down to 24: nineteen cut because nobody could act on the answer, eleven duplicate constructs, eight about matters already decided.
The second mechanism is arithmetic rather than judgement. The segment map is computed from the org chart before launch, at a minimum number of responses rather than headcount, so you know which cuts will exist before you promise one. Ten cuts were requested at Marloe Logistics. Five exist. Team exists for 16 of 28 cells. Team crossed with tenure has 86 populated cells and one that clears the threshold, and the four managers who asked for it were told in March.
Third, last round's commitments get reopened first, because that is what decides who answers this time. Fourteen were made, five delivered, four live, five dropped, and none of the drops was ever communicated. Teams whose commitment landed came back at 86 percent. Teams whose commitment was dropped came back at 52. Read the comments properly with comment synthesis; the ratings behind any performance question belong in a calibration session.
What is in the pack
Question Bank
Every question with the decision it would change, the named owner, the action if unfavourable, and whether the wording is verbatim enough to carry a trend line. Cut questions stay in with their reason.
Reportable Segment Map
Every cut anybody asked for, with populated cells, cells clearing the threshold, and people covered. Computed before launch so you promise only what will exist.
Participation Tracker
Each team against the number of responses it needs to get a report at all, with last round's commitment status beside it, which is what makes the participation number diagnostic.
Prior Round Commitments
Every promise from last round with its owner, its status, and the artifact an employee could actually see. Three status values: delivered, live, dropped, carried forward into an action planning pack that rechecks the actual item a delivered commitment was supposed to move.
Result by Segment
Company, department and team, with the team range printed beside the department range, and below-threshold segments shown as below threshold rather than as a percentage.
Survey Design, Communication Plan and Action Planning Guide
The record of every pre-launch decision, five drafted messages including the borderline-team note, and the plan that turns nineteen pre-agreed decisions into commitments with artifacts.
Two rules every prompt reads first
No question ships without an owner and a decision. A threshold is set once, in responses, and never lowered afterwards to make a number appear.
How it works
- 1
Send last round and the org chart
Previous results, whatever was promised afterwards including the promises that died, and headcount by team, level, location and tenure.
- 2
Get the commitment register and the participation split
Every promise with a real status, and last round's participation split three ways by what happened to each team's commitment.
- 3
Cut the bank and fix the threshold
Each question paired with a decision and an owner, anything ownerless cut, and the segment map computed before a single invitation goes out.
- 4
Field it and report where the variance is
Borderline teams told the response count they need, then a result by segment with the team range beside the department range.
Frequently asked questions
Why would you cut a question like "I trust senior leadership"?
Because at 41 percent favourable nobody can name what changes. It is a real construct and there is no owner and no decision, so asking it spends the employee's two minutes and their goodwill on nothing. Replace it with a question about something the company controls, like whether decisions get explained, which has an owner.
Most of my teams are under ten people. Is this useless?
It is the case the segment map exists for. Eight of Marloe's 28 teams can never be reportable and they are told so before launch rather than after. Those 26 people get a facilitated conversation run by somebody outside their reporting line, which is a better instrument for five people than a survey.
Do I need an external benchmark?
Only if your wording matches the published instrument exactly, which is the whole basis of any comparison. NIOSH kept half its quality of work life items verbatim from a 1977 survey specifically so answers could be compared across 25 years (NIOSH). Reworded questions get a figure and no trend line.
Will this tell me which managers are the problem?
No, and it refuses to. Results are reported by team, never by named manager, and never sorted by score, because a ranked list is read as a league table within seconds and the bottom three spend a month explaining rather than fixing. Whether a manager is the cause is a real question and a favourable percentage is not its answer.
How do I get participation back up?
Publish what happened to every commitment from last round, including the drops, with the actual reason for each. Teams whose commitments landed came back at 86 percent; the five dropped in silence came back at 52. One of those five lost its budget to base pay corrections in the merit cycle.
What happens to the free-text comments?
They are counted here, 611 of them from 178 respondents across four open questions, and read separately. Skimming several hundred comments for quotes that support the scores you already have is advocacy rather than analysis, so that job gets its own method in comment synthesis.
Can I run a survey during a union organising campaign?
Check it before launch rather than after. Soliciting employee grievances during a campaign can be treated as an implied promise of benefits, while a practice predating the campaign may continue unchanged (NLRB). An unchanged annual cadence is worth protecting for that reason alone. Take the specific facts to counsel.
Find out how many of your questions have an owner
Send last round's results, whatever was promised afterwards, and your headcount by team. The first things back are the questions nobody can act on, the segment cuts that will not exist, and what your participation number is going to be.
Cut my question list