What are Employee Surveys? Types, Importance & Creating Them

Employee surveys are structured questionnaires used to collect feedback from employees. Survey results help organizations understand their people’s sentiment on topics like engagement, satisfaction, culture, and leadership.

These surveys give insight into what drives engagement, performance, and retention—across teams, departments, locations, and countries. When you ask the right questions and listen to the answers, you find opportunities to strengthen culture, boost workplace morale, and build a global team that’s motivated to grow with you.

Types of employee surveys

Employee surveys come in many forms, each designed to uncover a different layer of the employee experience. Some measure engagement, others satisfaction, while others focus on culture, performance, or key moments like onboarding and offboarding.

Here are the main types of employee surveys:

Employee engagement surveys assess how emotionally committed employees are to their work and the organization.
Employee satisfaction surveys measure employee contentment with their roles, benefits, management, and work environment.
Company culture surveys assess perceptions of workplace values, communication, trust, and inclusivity.
Pulse surveys are used to monitor ongoing trends or reactions to recent changes. They are given frequently and consist of only a few questions.
360-degree feedback surveys collect anonymous performance feedback from peers, supervisors, and direct reports.
Onboarding surveys gather insights from new hires about their initial experience and training process.
Exit surveys identify why employees leave and uncover areas for organizational improvement.

Which survey (or surveys) you choose will depend on what information you want to glean from employees. Many organizations use a variety of survey types for a holistic picture of their employees’ thoughts and feelings.

How to create an employee survey

Before beginning, ask yourself: What do I want to learn from my employees? Then design the survey from there. Ultimately, the goal is to create a survey that truly captures how your people think and feel and gives you data that you can act on as part of your human capital management strategy.

Here’s the caveat: According to Gallup, only 8% of employees believe that their responses to employee surveys will be acted on, which may affect how seriously they take the survey. For that reason, it’s imperative to change that perception and let your people know that their feedback matters and you will act on it.

You’ve been planning on surveying your employees. But where to begin? This list walks you through the survey design process, step by step.

Set a clear objective. Know what insights you want to gain. It can be a good idea to add one focus per survey (think engagement, onboarding, or sentiments on leadership), so the questions stay tight and the data is easier to act on.
Select the right survey type and frequency. Match the format to your goal: quick pulse checks for fast feedback, deeper annual surveys for strategy, and event-based surveys for key milestones or changes.
Use clear, unbiased questions. Avoid leading language. Include both quantitative and open-ended formats. And perhaps most importantly: Stick to simple, single‑topic questions so employees don’t have to guess what you’re asking.
Test your survey. Pilot it with a small group to catch issues. Use their feedback to refine confusing wording, remove duplicates, and trim the fat before you roll it out to your full team. (Keep the survey short and easy to complete in one sitting so people actually finish it, not abandon it halfway through. Bonus points if it’s mobile‑friendly!)
Ensure anonymity and confidentiality. Use secure platforms that protect employee privacy. Employees will not be emboldened to tell the truth if their names (and livelihoods) are attached to their responses.
Optimize delivery. Send surveys at opportune times to ensure maximum participation.

Remember that surveying your people in and of itself “does not improve performance or culture,” according to Gallup. “What matters is how leaders interpret the results and what they do in response,” they say.

Following up on survey results

Put bluntly: Don’t ask employees to complete a survey if you don’t plan to meaningfully act on the results. Doing so will likely lead to poor outcomes like an increase in turnover and lowered engagement, according to Gallup’s research.

Here’s how to follow up on survey results:

Analyze data and identify trends. Start by scanning high-level trends across the company, then zoom in on team- or location-level insights. What trends are you seeing across the company? What trends are more localized?
Share insights with employees. Communicate top findings transparently with your employees—and act fast. Share the results while the survey is still fresh in employees’ minds. Because managers are typically focused on driving employee productivity and engagement, it’s beneficial to share talking points about the survey results with them. That way, they can thoughtfully frame the results with their team.
Act on the feedback. Prioritize changes based on what’s feasible and impactful. You probably don’t have the bandwidth to tackle every piece of feedback. Pick the ones that are most important and act on them. Don’t assume that employees will know that you have heard them; make sure to publicize internally how you responded to their thoughts.
Monitor progress over time. Conduct follow-up surveys to track improvements and reinforce accountability.

Done right, employee surveys become a core driver of how you build a better workplace (not just a periodic HR task that you have to cross off the never-ending to-do list).

Why employee surveys matter

Employee surveys matter because they turn employee experience from a guessing game into real, actionable insight. When you give people a safe way to share what’s working and what’s not, you uncover the ideas and friction points you’d never see in your dashboard metrics. Done well, surveys become a core engine for better decisions, a stronger culture, and a more resilient global workforce.

Employee surveys can:

Strengthen employee engagement and morale. How? Through learning what’s lowering engagement and morale and taking real steps to solve those problems.
Identify organizational strengths and gaps. Celebrate what you’re doing right and acknowledge what you’re missing the mark on.
Promote a transparent, feedback-friendly culture. We know that employee surveys alone don’t make a difference to engagement. But when you incorporate leadership engagement and tie those surveys to meaningful change, they do promote a culture where feedback and personal growth are welcome.
Improve retention and inform talent strategy. If you ask the right questions, employee surveys reveal why people stay, what prompts them to leave, and what changes would make your best employees want to grow their careers with you.
Support compliance efforts around workplace equity and inclusion. Survey results give you measurable data on how different groups experience your workplace, so you can spot gaps, document action, and show progress over time.

Put employee feedback to work

If you’re ready to do more than just collect survey data, Pebl, an Employer of Record (EOR), can help you turn feedback into action across every country where you employ people. With Pebl, you can connect employee insights to how you hire and pay your global workforce—all in one compliant, scalable platform.

Talk to us about how Pebl can support your next survey initiative and help you build a better employee experience in 185 countries and counting.

This information does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal or tax advice and is for general informational purposes only. The intent of this document is solely to provide general and preliminary information for private use. Do not rely on it as an alternative to legal, financial, taxation, or accountancy advice from an appropriately qualified professional. The content in this guide is provided “as is,” and no representations are made that the content is error-free.