Best questions for employee survey about compensation and benefits

Here are some of the best questions for an employee survey about compensation and benefits, plus tips to help you create them. We’ve used our experience at Specific to help you build surveys like this in seconds, so you get richer, more actionable feedback.

Top open-ended questions for compensation and benefits surveys

Open-ended questions let employees go beyond a simple yes or no—they reveal true feelings, experiences, and the “why” behind satisfaction or frustration. This type of question is especially useful when you want detailed feedback, stories, or context. Thorough answers help clarify what’s really happening on your team, and open the door to actionable improvements.

1. What do you value most about our current compensation and benefits package?

2. Can you describe any aspects of our pay structure that you find confusing or unfair?

3. How do our benefits (healthcare, PTO, retirement, etc.) compare to what you’ve received at previous employers?

4. What additional benefits would make you feel more supported at work?

5. How does your salary impact your overall job satisfaction and motivation?

6. Have you ever considered leaving the company due to pay or benefits? If so, what influenced your decision?

7. What types of financial well-being programs would be most useful to you?

8. Where do you see room for improvement in our benefits communication or transparency?

9. What changes to compensation or benefits would have the biggest positive impact on you?

10. If you could design one new benefit for the company, what would it be and why?

Open-ended questions like these surface issues you might never spot through multiple-choice options. They’re your best shot at gathering fresh insight—especially when you see declining satisfaction rates, such as just 56.7% of U.S. workers being satisfied with their pay—a drop from last year [2].

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for compensation and benefits

Multiple-choice, single-select questions are the workhorse of any compensation survey. They come in handy when you need hard data, want a fast way to measure opinion, or simply want to lower the cognitive load for employees. They’re an especially good starting point to spark engagement or segment issues—sometimes, it’s easier for people to choose from a short list before you dig deeper with follow-ups.

Here are three highly effective single-select questions (with example choices):

Question: How satisfied are you with your current salary?

• Very satisfied

• Somewhat satisfied

• Not satisfied

Question: Which benefit do you value most in your current package?

• Health insurance

• PTO (Paid Time Off)

• Retirement plan

• Other

Question: How well do you understand your total compensation and benefits?

• Completely

• Somewhat

• Not at all

When to follow up with "why?" Whenever a response signals either strong feelings or ambiguity, ask why to dig for root causes or stories. For instance: if an employee selects “Not satisfied” with salary, follow up with “Can you share what influences your dissatisfaction?” This can reveal whether it’s market competitiveness, fairness, or company performance at play.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always add “Other” if you think the listed options won’t cover every possibility. When employees pick “Other” and a followup asks them to elaborate, you’re set up to discover benefits or frustrations you hadn’t thought of—often the source of unexpected, actionable insights.

Should you use an NPS question in compensation and benefits surveys?

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) isn’t just for customers—it’s also becoming an industry benchmark for employee sentiment. In the context of compensation and benefits, you can use a simple NPS-style question to get a pulse:

• On a scale from 0–10, how likely are you to recommend our compensation and benefits package to a friend or colleague?

This question gives you a single metric you can track over time and compare across teams, locations, or even companies. It’s especially powerful because it distills satisfaction and advocacy into a simple, actionable number—and invites contextual follow-ups for both low and high scores. Want to try it? Jump into our NPS survey builder for employee compensation.

The power of follow-up questions

The difference between a good survey and a great one? How you handle follow-up questions. Check out our deep dive into automatic AI follow-ups—they’re a game changer for employee surveys.

When we use AI-driven follow-ups in Specific’s conversational surveys, the platform listens to each answer and immediately asks the next-best question—naturally, and only when it makes sense. The result? You get the full context, just like if a skilled HR expert was running the interview live. This is critical for benefits data, where **67% of employees want more pay transparency**, but only **25% know their own pay band** [4]. Digging deeper helps uncover the real sticking points and ideas for improvement.

• Employee: "I don’t feel fully informed about my compensation."

• AI follow-up: "Can you tell me what specifically is unclear or missing for you?"

How many followups to ask? Two to three thoughtful follow-up questions usually surface the underlying insights you need without causing survey fatigue. In Specific, you can set the number of follow-ups—or allow the respondent to skip ahead when their point has been made.

This makes it a conversational survey: Your survey doesn’t feel like a cold form—it feels like a dialogue, which encourages honest, nuanced answers. That's at the heart of a truly conversational survey.

AI survey response analysis: Even with hundreds of detailed comments and “Other” explanations, it’s effortless to analyze all that unstructured input when you use AI. See how our system makes this possible in our guide to analyzing compensation survey responses with AI.

Try generating an AI-driven survey and see the interview-style experience for yourself.

Prompts to generate compensation and benefits survey questions

If you want to create survey questions with GPT (like ChatGPT or in Specific’s AI survey generator), starting with a strong prompt is key. Begin with:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for Employee survey about Compensation And Benefits.

But you’ll get much better results by giving context. Here’s how you might extend the prompt:

Our company has 200 employees, offices in two states, and is adding new health and wellness benefits next year. Please consider that many employees have concerns about transparency and work-life balance. Suggest 10 open-ended questions for an employee survey about compensation and benefits.

Once you have an initial batch, ask the AI to help organize and refine:

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

Finally, you can take the best categories and drill deeper—simply prompt:

Generate 10 questions for categories Pay Transparency, Benefits Usage, and Desired Improvements.

The more detail you provide, the more practical (and tailored) your survey will become.

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey ditches the traditional “one-way” questionnaire. Instead, it brings in a friendly, chat-based flow, with the AI—or researcher—responding in real time to answers, asking follow-up questions and adapting as the conversation unfolds. This approach transforms dry survey-taking into an interactive exchange, increasing honesty and completion rates.

Consider the difference:

Why use AI for employee surveys? Quite simply, you get depth, nuance, and scale—fast. With AI survey examples, you can instantly generate dozens of thoughtful questions, adapt interviews on-the-fly, and analyze responses as they come in. For sensitive topics like pay and benefits, this means faster feedback loops, sharper insights, and a better employee experience.

We’ve put a lot of care into making sure Specific is the best-in-class for conversational employee surveys. The result is a fluid, chat-like interaction that feels familiar for both creators and employees—removing friction and encouraging participation. Check out our walkthrough on how to create a compensation and benefits survey using Specific for more ideas and tailored prompts.

See this compensation and benefits survey example now

Accelerate your next employee survey with AI. Discover richer feedback and actionable insights in less time—Specific’s conversational survey engine gets you there fast.