Best questions for civil servant survey about remote work experience in government

Here are some of the best questions for a civil servant survey about remote work experience in government, plus our favorite tips for creating them. With Specific, you can instantly generate your own survey tailored exactly for this audience and topic.

Best open-ended questions for civil servant surveys on remote work experience in government

Open-ended questions help us go beyond surface-level checkboxes and draw out genuine insights. They’re perfect when you want stories, context, or unexpected viewpoints—especially useful as remote work shapes government work globally. Given that 97% of public sector employees want to continue some form of remote work post-pandemic, understanding their nuanced feedback is crucial [2]. Here are the top 10 open-ended questions we recommend for civil servant surveys on remote work in government:

1. What have been the biggest benefits for you since working remotely in your government role?

2. What are the main challenges you’ve experienced with hybrid or remote work arrangements?

3. How has remote work changed your ability to collaborate with colleagues?

4. Can you describe any changes in your work-life balance since working remotely?

5. What tools, processes, or support have made remote work smooth for you?

6. Are there any tasks that have become harder (or easier) to do remotely? Please give examples.

7. How does communication with your team or supervisor compare now to when you worked in-person?

8. What would make remote or hybrid work even better for you and your team?

9. Have you encountered any security or data privacy issues while working remotely? If so, how did you handle them?

10. Is there anything else you’d like leadership to know about your remote work experience?

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for civil servant remote work surveys

Single-select multiple-choice questions are great when you want to quickly capture patterns, quantify responses, or make it easy for respondents to get started before digging deeper. Sometimes, starting with a choice feels less intimidating than drafting a paragraph. Hybrid working is common in the public sector, with 48% of public servants working at least partly from home in 2023 [6]. Here are three tested questions for these surveys:

Question: How often do you currently work remotely?

• Full-time remote

• Mostly remote (3-4 days per week)

• Hybrid (1-2 days per week remote)

• Fully in-office

• Other

Question: Since switching to remote or hybrid work, how has your productivity changed?

• Significantly improved

• Slightly improved

• No change

• Slightly declined

• Significantly declined

Question: Which of the following best describes your preferred working arrangement in the future?

• Fully remote

• Mostly remote

• Hybrid

• Fully in-office

• Other

When to follow up with "why?" When you need to understand the reason behind a choice, follow up with "why?". For instance, if someone selects "Significantly declined" productivity, a follow-up like “Why do you feel your productivity has declined?” reveals actionable details that you’d never get from just one click.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always include an "Other" choice when you’re uncertain if your list’s complete—especially in a field like government, where work structures can be unique. Follow-up questions on "Other" responses can uncover unexpected insights that structured options miss.

Using the NPS question for civil servant remote work surveys

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) asks, “How likely are you to recommend remote/hybrid work in government to a colleague?” It's a gold standard for gauging loyalty and advocacy, even internally. This works well in the civil servant context—where retention is a concern, given that 45% of employees would consider leaving if remote work flexibility is cut [5]. Collecting NPS gives management a clear indicator of sentiment, allowing them to benchmark progress or spot shifts in satisfaction with remote work.

If you want to try it, you can use Specific's NPS survey builder for civil servant remote work.

The power of follow-up questions

Follow-up questions are where a conversational survey powered by AI truly shines. With automation (see automated follow-up questions), you get tailored probing right when it’s needed—no extra email chains or time-consuming manual checks. Specific’s AI understands previous replies and asks precise follow-ups in real time, like a skilled researcher, so you get full context and richer insight every time.

• Civil servant: "Communication with colleagues has changed."

• AI follow-up: "Can you describe in what ways communication has changed since you started working remotely?”

This tight loop ensures you’re never left guessing what someone meant, especially with complex experiences like remote work in government.

How many follow-ups to ask? In practice, 2-3 follow-ups gets the extra detail you need without tiring the respondent—and with Specific, you can set it so the survey moves on once you’ve gathered the needed data.

This makes it a conversational survey: Each exchange behaves like a real chat, keeping the dialogue natural and engaging (not robotic or overly scripted).

AI survey analysis, analyze survey responses: Even big banks of unstructured responses aren’t a problem—you can easily analyze survey responses using AI with platforms like Specific (see how to analyze responses from civil servant surveys). AI summarizes everything, pulling out key themes instantly so patterns emerge—even from open-ended feedback.

These automated follow-ups are a modern approach—generate an AI survey for civil servant remote work and experience this for yourself.

How to write prompts for AI to generate great remote work survey questions for civil servants

AI tools like GPT excel when given clear, contextual prompts. To get brilliant survey content, start simple, then add detail for best results.

First prompt example:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for a civil servant survey about remote work experience in government.

To improve, add context—describe your agency, specific topics you care about, or the goals behind the survey. Here’s an upgraded prompt:

We are a government agency that recently adopted hybrid work. We want to understand both the challenges and the positives of remote work for our staff and what we can do to support them better. Suggest 10 open-ended questions that will uncover experience, satisfaction, and pain points related to remote work among civil servants.

Second prompt—categorize generated questions:

Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.

Then refine further:

Generate 10 questions for categories "team collaboration" and "work–life balance".

This method lets you build a custom survey blueprint with AI, targeting what really matters to your government team.

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey uses chat-like interaction—not old-school, static web forms. Respondents answer questions one at a time (often phrased in natural language by AI), with the system able to adjust immediately, probe, clarify, or follow-up in real time.

This interaction boosts completion rates and draws more honest, detailed feedback—especially important as remote work shakes up the traditional civil service workplace. Given that 84% of government workers noticed improved work-life balance due to hybrid setups [8], it’s crucial to capture the nuances in their experiences.

Compared to conventional manual survey creation, an AI survey builder like Specific lets you quickly launch robust, customized surveys. You don’t draft individual questions by hand, worry about branching, or lose hours editing—the AI does the heavy lifting, from phrasing questions to follow-up probing, in one natural workflow.

Why use AI for civil servant surveys? The evolving landscape of public sector work demands flexible, responsive tools. AI-powered, conversational surveys meet civil servants where they are—making it far easier (and more enjoyable) to gather the feedback that shapes flexible, productive, and secure remote work systems.

If you’re curious, see our step-by-step guide on how to create a civil servant survey about remote work experience in government with Specific. You’ll notice how our AI survey editor makes customization effortless—just describe your tweak, and the system updates the survey automatically.

Specific delivers a best-in-class user experience for both survey creators and respondents. The feedback flow feels genuinely conversational, so people open up—making every response count.

See this remote work experience in government survey example now

Explore a real survey example for civil servants’ remote work in government—designed to capture nuanced, actionable insights in a conversational way. Try it out: fast setup, natural interaction, and deep analytic power in one.