Here are some of the best questions for an employee survey about recognition and rewards, plus simple tips on how to craft them. With Specific, you can build a smart, conversational survey in seconds.
Best open-ended questions for a recognition and rewards employee survey
Open-ended questions unlock candid feedback. They’re best when you want honest, detailed thoughts—answers that actually tell a story about what’s working (and what’s not). They help you discover what motivates employees, what they value, and where things fall short, because you aren’t boxing them into preset choices.
Here are the 10 best open-ended questions to ask:
How do you usually feel when you receive recognition for your work here?
Can you describe an example of recognition or reward that made you feel truly valued at work?
What types of recognition do you find most meaningful (e.g., public praise, private feedback, rewards)?
How would you improve the way recognition and rewards are given in our organization?
When was the last time you felt underappreciated or overlooked? What happened?
In your opinion, what’s missing from our current recognition and rewards program?
How do recognition and rewards influence your motivation or engagement?
What suggestions do you have for rewards that would be genuinely motivating for you?
How well do team-based achievements get recognized here?
If you could change one thing about how recognition is handled, what would it be?
Open-ended questions empower employees to express how recognition impacts their morale. According to Achievers, employees who receive recognition at least monthly are twice as likely to report being productive [1]. That’s why real, unfiltered feedback is so important.
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for recognition and rewards surveys
Single-select multiple-choice questions work well when you want to quantify opinions, spot trends, or quickly start the feedback process—especially when an open text box might be too daunting. They’re fast for people to answer and give you stats you can use right away. Once you see a pattern, you can always trigger a follow-up to dig deeper into a specific choice.
Here are three effective single-select questions:
Question: How satisfied are you with the current recognition and rewards program?
Very satisfied
Somewhat satisfied
Neutral
Somewhat dissatisfied
Very dissatisfied
Question: Which type of recognition do you value most?
Verbal praise from management
Written feedback (emails, notes)
Company awards or certificates
Bonuses or financial rewards
Other
Question: How often do you feel recognized at work?
Daily
Weekly
Monthly
Rarely
Never
When to follow up with “why?” Sometimes, a single choice doesn’t tell the whole story. If someone selects “very dissatisfied,” following up with “Why do you feel this way about our recognition program?” will give you context to make meaningful improvements. These follow-ups help you understand the reasons behind the numbers—turning stats into insights.
When and why to add the “Other” choice? If your list is thorough but you still want to catch outliers, adding “Other” lets people share unique perspectives. A follow-up like “Please describe what you had in mind” can uncover hidden motivators or missed opportunities in your current program.
Including these structured questions—alongside open-ended ones—helps create a survey that produces deep, actionable insights. As award.co reports, companies with strong recognition programs see a 31% lower voluntary turnover rate [2]. Quantifying employee preferences is the first step to keeping valued team members.
NPS survey question for recognition and rewards feedback
Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures how likely employees are to recommend your organization as a great place to work based on its recognition and rewards. It’s a quick, proven way to gauge overall sentiment and loyalty, and can help you spot trends over time. For a recognition and rewards survey, try this NPS-style question:
“On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company to a friend or colleague because of how we recognize and reward employees?” (See NPS survey example)
NPS helps you benchmark changes and prioritize improvements. Since employees are three times more loyal to organizations that prioritize recognition [2], this single question can guide your pulse surveys year-round.
The power of follow-up questions
Follow-up questions are a game changer for recognition and rewards surveys. Instead of leaving insights on the table with single responses, you can uncover context in real time. Automated follow-ups do the heavy lifting: Specific’s AI tailors its “next question” like an expert interviewer—not a script—which means richer feedback without endless email ping-pong.
Employee: “I wish there were more rewards.”
AI follow-up: “Can you tell me what types of rewards would be most meaningful for you?”
How many followups to ask? In practice, 2–3 follow-ups are usually enough to get to the heart of an issue. That’s how Specific is designed—once the AI has gathered enough context, it automatically moves on to the next question, but you can adjust this in the survey settings.
This makes it a conversational survey: Each interaction flows naturally, just like a real conversation—not a cold, static form.
AI makes analyzing feedback easy: Worried about all the extra text? No problem—AI-powered tools let you analyze responses instantly, surfacing top insights and themes for you.
Automated follow-ups are a new—and powerful—way to truly understand what makes your team tick. Try generating a survey yourself and see how easy it is to collect richer, more useful data.
How to prompt ChatGPT for better recognition and rewards survey questions
If you want to come up with smart questions using AI, good prompts make all the difference.
Start with a direct prompt:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for employee survey about recognition and rewards.
To get better results, share context about your goals, company size, or pain points:
Our company is mid-sized, and we want to boost retention and measure how valued employees feel in their teams. Please suggest 10 open-ended questions for our employee survey about recognition and rewards, with a focus on actionable feedback.
To organize questions:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Once you see the categories, dig deeper:
Generate 10 questions for categories “motivation,” “rewards preferences,” and “team recognition.”
It’s a process—refining prompts and narrowing focus will give you surveys tailor-made for your actual challenges. Specific’s AI survey editor lets you do this by simply describing what you want to change.
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey feels just like a chat: questions unfold naturally, the AI probes deeper where needed, and employees share thoughts with less friction. This is the breakthrough behind AI survey examples like what you get with Specific—it actually adapts to each respondent, rather than sticking to a rigid script.
Here’s a quick comparison:
Manual Surveys | AI-Generated Conversational Surveys |
|---|---|
Static, one-size-fits-all | Personalized, smart follow-ups in real time |
Boring forms, low response rates | Mobile-friendly chat, engaging and familiar |
Time-consuming to analyze | Instant AI summaries and rich analysis |
Why use AI for employee surveys? AI survey builders like Specific let you launch more effective surveys in minutes. You save time on survey creation, boost response rates, and get richer data that’s instantly ready for analysis. Plus, with AI survey generation, you never need to start from scratch or worry about bland, repetitive questions. Interactive features like follow-ups and chat-based editors make adapting your survey effortless at any stage.
Specific offers a best-in-class conversational survey experience, so employee feedback is smooth, engaging, and actionable—for both you and your team. Here’s how to easily create your survey.
See this recognition and rewards survey example now
Experience the difference a conversational, AI-powered survey makes. Make feedback more meaningful, effortless, and reveal insights you’ve been missing—see your recognition and rewards survey come to life with Specific today.