Here are some of the best questions for an employee survey about company culture, plus tips on how to create them. With Specific, you can build an employee culture survey in seconds using AI.
The best open-ended questions for an employee survey about company culture
Open-ended questions help us get beyond yes/no and dig into the “why” and the “how.” They give employees the space to express themselves fully, revealing what’s really going on under the surface. These questions are best when you want authentic feedback or to discover issues you might not have spotted. Considering 88% of employees say a strong company culture is the key to business success [1], knowing the words your team uses to describe their experience is invaluable.
How would you describe our company culture in your own words?
What makes you proud to work here?
What’s the one thing we could improve in our work environment?
Can you share a time when you felt truly valued at work?
What’s the biggest challenge in maintaining our company values?
How does leadership support a positive culture?
Have you ever felt excluded or left out? What happened?
What aspects of our culture help you do your best work?
Are there traditions or rituals you think we should start, stop, or change?
What advice would you give a new employee about fitting in here?
The best single-select multiple-choice questions for employee culture surveys
Multiple-choice questions simplify data analysis and help identify trends across the organization, especially when collecting feedback at scale. Use these when you want to quantify sentiment or highlight priorities—sometimes, it’s easier for people to select from a few focused options instead of writing long answers. These structured questions are proven to boost engagement and improve response rates, making them popular in research-driven teams [3].
Examples:
Question: How would you rate our company’s commitment to positive culture?
Excellent
Good
Neutral
Poor
Question: Which company value do you feel is most lived out day to day?
Collaboration
Transparency
Innovation
Respect
Other
Question: How often do you feel burnt out at work?
Never
Rarely
Sometimes
Often
When to follow up with “why?” Asking “why” unlocks the thinking behind a choice, creating a richer conversation and showing employees you care about their reasoning—not just their answers. For example, if someone answers “Poor” on culture commitment, follow up: “What specific actions would make you feel more supported?”
When and why to add the “Other” choice? Sometimes your options miss a unique viewpoint. Including “Other” with an open field lets respondents surface insights you may not have considered. Follow-up questions here can uncover new themes, traditions, or even problems brewing under the radar.
NPS question for company culture surveys: why it matters
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) isn’t just for customers—it's a fast pulse-check on employee sentiment, too. The classic “On a scale of 0–10, how likely are you to recommend this company as a place to work?” tells you at a glance who feels positive, neutral, or negative. Tracking NPS over time helps HR spot shifts in morale and prioritize deeper conversations. Strong internal NPS scores often correlate with company success; after all, engaged employees outperform disengaged ones by over 40% [2]. Create your own NPS survey for employees about company culture with this NPS survey builder.
The power of follow-up questions
Automated follow-ups are a game changer for surveys. If you’re curious about how they work, check out our feature on AI-generated follow-up questions. They let you uncover the “why” and “how” behind each answer, just like an expert interviewer—but instantly and at scale. Specific’s AI asks personalized, context-aware follow-up questions in real time, helping you get richer feedback without manual back-and-forth. Picture all the hours saved compared to sending emails and waiting for clarification!
Employee: “I feel like communication could improve.”
AI follow-up: “Can you give an example of when a lack of communication affected your work?”
How many follow-ups to ask? Usually, 2-3 focused follow-ups get you everything you need. Any more and people might disengage. It’s best to allow skipping ahead once you’ve collected the insight you want—Specific has a setting for this.
This makes it a conversational survey: Instead of a silence after a confusing answer, the survey chats with the respondent, making the whole process feel more like a real conversation. People open up and give more meaningful feedback.
AI survey analysis: Analyzing all these open-text responses used to be the biggest pain point. Now AI summarizes, organizes, and lets you chat with your survey data, so even a mass of text is no problem.
Automated, personalized follow-up questions are new—try generating a survey with Specific and you’ll see the difference.
How to compose a prompt for AI to create your survey questions
AI can brainstorm questions fast, but you’ll get even better results if you speak its language. Start by asking for a batch of open-ended questions:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for an employee survey about company culture.
But the more context you give, the better the output. Try:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for an employee survey about company culture at a fast-moving SaaS startup with a remote and hybrid team. My goal is to improve team trust and reduce burnout.
Once you have your list, organize it further:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Want to go even deeper? After reviewing the categories, continue with:
Generate 10 questions for the category “Recognition and Rewards.”
What is a conversational survey (and how AI builds them better)
Conversational surveys feel like a natural chat—think friendly, smart follow-ups that dig beneath the surface, not just a static, cold form. Instead of ticking boxes, employees engage in real dialogue. And this difference shows; AI-driven surveys achieve completion rates of 70–90%, compared to just 10–30% for traditional forms [3]. Plus, the AI follows up instantly if something isn’t clear or needs deeper exploration.
Manual Survey | AI-Generated Survey |
|---|---|
Create questions by hand, research best practices, edit back and forth | Describe your topic to the AI, instantly get a precise, custom survey |
Manually analyze responses, losing time and nuance | AI summarizes themes, sentiment, and anomalies in real time |
Low engagement, high drop-off rates | Feel of a chat, high completion, more honest responses |
No follow-ups (unless expensive research interviews) | Automated, smart, and contextual follow-up questions |
Why use AI for employee surveys? Because the landscape is changing—AI and NLP enable real-time interpretation and dramatically improved data quality [3]. Teams can launch, update, and analyze surveys without expert intervention. You can even create a conversational survey faster than a meeting invite. AI survey examples generated with Specific are designed for best-in-class experience, making the feedback process smooth and engaging for both creators and employees.
See this company culture survey example now
Supercharge your insights: Create your own employee company culture survey today in minutes with questions tailored to your team, instant follow-ups, and rich analytics—all powered by AI.