Here are some of the best questions for a civil servant survey about workplace culture in public agencies, plus quick tips to create them. We’ve seen how easy it is to generate great surveys with Specific—so you can start collecting feedback in seconds.
Best open-ended questions for civil servant surveys about workplace culture
When you want civil servants to share what really matters to them, open-ended questions are your best tool. These questions invite depth, nuance, and honest feedback—especially crucial when navigating the complexities of the public sector. Whether you're diagnosing morale, uncovering pain points, or surfacing good practices, open-ended questions bring out rich insights traditional forms might miss.
There’s a clear reason this approach works: civil servants themselves say that agency culture profoundly affects how well they perform and how committed they feel. In fact, 70% of U.S. government employees report their agency’s culture shapes their desire to give their best effort, and nearly as many say it influences their productivity. [1]
Here are ten of the best open-ended questions we recommend for exploring workplace culture in public agencies:
What aspects of our agency’s culture help you feel engaged and motivated at work?
Can you describe a recent experience where you felt proud of our public service team or department?
What challenges or frustrations do you encounter most often in your day-to-day work?
How would you describe the communication style within our department?
What does ethical behavior look like in your role or team?
Are there policies, practices, or traditions you wish we could improve or change?
In what ways do you feel supported (or unsupported) by leadership and management?
When thinking about your peers, what behaviors or attitudes most contribute to positive teamwork?
If you could change one thing about our agency’s workplace culture, what would it be?
Can you share an example of when you faced a difficult situation and how the agency’s culture helped (or hindered) your response?
Best single-select multiple-choice questions to quantify key insights
While open-ended questions reveal deep stories, sometimes you need quick, quantifiable data—that’s where single-select multiple-choice questions shine. They’re especially useful if you want to benchmark perceptions, track trends, or kickstart a conversation with a simple choice. Many people find it easier to select an option first before expanding with further feedback. Using a few clear options helps “warm up” respondents and provides structure for follow-up.
Here are three single-select questions designed to surface important signals:
Question: How would you rate the overall culture of your department?
Very positive
Mostly positive
Neutral
Mostly negative
Very negative
Question: Do you feel your managers set a positive example for ethical conduct?
Always
Often
Sometimes
Rarely
Never
Question: What is the primary reason you would consider leaving the agency?
Desire for better pay/benefits
Lack of advancement opportunity
Poor workplace culture
Personal reasons
Other
When to follow up with "why?" Use a follow-up "why?" whenever someone selects an option that could mean different things, or when you want to encourage reflection. For example, if a respondent chooses “Mostly negative” for department culture, a thoughtful “Why do you feel this way?” can reveal root causes and actionable insights. Specific can trigger these follow-ups automatically, so you never miss a learning opportunity.
When and why to add the “Other” choice? Always include “Other” when you can’t anticipate every possible answer—especially concerning sensitive issues or nuanced factors. When civil servants choose “Other,” follow-up probing uncovers needs and views you hadn’t considered, sparking new improvement ideas.
NPS question: measuring advocacy in public agencies
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is widely used in private and public sectors to gauge how likely people are to recommend an organization. For civil servants, it’s an excellent way to capture the overall climate: if employees wouldn’t suggest their workplace to a colleague, there’s a reason worth exploring. An NPS question, like “How likely are you to recommend working at this agency to a friend?” gives an instant pulse on morale—and layering in AI-powered follow-up questions helps you understand why someone is a promoter, passive, or detractor.
With Specific’s NPS survey builder for civil servants, you’ll get not only the score, but a breakdown of root causes and suggestions, automating what used to be a manual interview process.
Recent data shows that up to 22% of UK civil servants report wanting to leave their organization within a year, many for better pay and benefits [2]. NPS can warn you early and help focus retention efforts before those intentions turn into costly turnover.
The power of follow-up questions
Follow-up questions are where the magic happens. Instead of stopping at “what” or “how,” a follow-up probes “why,” “how so,” or “can you share an example?” This is a core feature in any conversational survey—and why platforms like Specific stand out. When you use automated AI follow-ups, you get context, nuance, and actionable next steps in a fraction of the time it takes to run manual interviews.
Specific’s AI listens to each answer and instantly tailors a follow-up. This makes the entire survey feel more like a real conversation than a rigid form. Here’s how missed follow-ups often play out:
Civil servant: “Management doesn’t always support our ideas.”
AI follow-up: “Can you share a recent example where you felt your idea wasn’t supported? What impact did that have on you or your team?”
Without that follow-up, you’re left wondering what was meant, or what could have helped—which can make your survey data much less actionable.
How many follow-ups to ask? Two or three well-crafted follow-ups usually yield enough context. Specific’s survey builder lets you set how deep to dig, or skip to the next question when you’re satisfied with the response. This keeps the experience engaging without making it feel like an interrogation.
This makes it a conversational survey: With these dynamic follow-ups, your survey feels less like a questionnaire and more like a dialogue—boosting engagement and the quality of responses.
Easy AI analysis, even for unstructured text: With so much qualitative feedback, you need fast, accurate ways to surface patterns. The good news? AI survey response analysis makes light work of synthesizing responses—even across hundreds of open-ended answers—so you spot what matters most without getting lost in spreadsheets.
Try building a survey with AI-powered follow-ups to experience just how much richer the insights can be.
Prompting ChatGPT or GPT for great survey questions
If you want to brainstorm or refine your civil servant workplace culture survey using AI tools like ChatGPT, it’s easy to start—but a little structure helps the AI do its best work. Instead of open-ended requests, give clear instructions and context.
For a quick start, try this:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for civil servant survey about workplace culture in public agencies.
You’ll get even better results if you provide more about your organization, what you care about, and the context. For example:
Our public agency is looking to improve collaboration between departments and retain staff. We want to know which aspects of our culture keep people engaged, and which areas contribute to turnover. Suggest 10 open-ended questions for civil servant survey about workplace culture in public agencies.
Then, to refine your survey, ask the AI to organize these questions into categories:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Once you have the categories, decide which ones are most relevant. For those, prompt:
Generate 10 questions for categories “collaboration” and “motivation.”
Iterate as needed to create a strong, focused bank of questions tailored to your unique workplace culture and the issues your team wants to explore.
What is a conversational survey?
Conversational surveys flip the script on traditional survey forms. Instead of juggling endless fields in static web forms, these surveys feel like a natural back-and-forth—just like texting with a research expert. The AI customizes each interaction, probes deeper with smart follow-ups, and adapts to responses in real time. This is exactly how AI survey generators like Specific work: tell it what you want, and it drafts, personalizes, and adjusts your entire survey flow in minutes.
Manual Survey Creation | AI Survey Generation (Specific) |
|---|---|
Requires writing and structuring each question by hand | Understands your intent and drafts a full survey in seconds |
Follow-ups are time-consuming—manual interviews needed | Automates dynamic follow-up questions for richer insights |
Harder to customize tone, logic, or translations | Conversational, on-brand experience, adjusts tone and language easily |
Analyzing qualitative responses is tedious | Built-in AI summarizes and spotlights themes, instantly |
Why use AI for civil servant surveys? AI-driven survey solutions help you break through admin overload and bottlenecks by automating the hard parts: drafting great questions, probing for context, and delivering insights you can actually act on. Instead of spending weeks designing and analyzing surveys, you’ll have powerful feedback in days—and a living, evolving understanding of agency culture. Try an AI survey example for workplace culture in public agencies for a sense of how much smoother the process becomes.
Plus, Specific offers a best-in-class experience for conversational surveys—making the whole feedback process effortless for your team and for the civil servants who answer.
If you want step-by-step instructions, our guide on how to create a workplace culture civil servant survey covers everything you need.
See this workplace culture in public agencies survey example now
Transform your feedback process into an engaging conversation and move from opinions to actionable insights in minutes—see how Specific can help you uncover what matters most to your team.