Best questions for employee survey about return to office experience

Here are some of the best questions for an employee survey about return to office experience, plus tips on how to create them. If you want to build a survey in seconds, you can use Specific’s AI survey generator to generate your own in one click—adapt and go deeper as needed.

The best open-ended questions for return to office employee surveys

Open-ended questions are essential when you want deeper insights and honest feedback. They help you go beyond surface-level sentiment to uncover real motivations, frustrations, and suggestions—especially during transitions like a return to office. In this context, open-ended feedback surfaces insights that structured questions simply can’t capture. Employees’ preferences vary widely: for instance, 37% of U.S. job seekers want fully remote roles, while 60% prefer hybrid work [1]. That’s a huge range to navigate. Use open-ended questions early in your survey or as follow-ups to quantify opinions with context.

1. What has been your biggest challenge since returning to the office?

2. How has your daily work routine changed compared to when you worked remotely?

3. What aspects of the office environment positively impact your productivity?

4. What would make your return to the office experience better?

5. How do you feel about the current balance between in-office and remote work?

6. Can you share an example of a recent collaboration that worked well (or didn’t) since returning?

7. What concerns, if any, do you have about working in the office now?

8. How could company leadership better support your transition back to the office?

9. What’s one change you’d suggest for our office policies or work arrangements?

10. Is there anything else you’d like to share about your return to office experience?

These questions encourage nuanced answers, letting you discover how employees really feel and why—crucial for shaping flexible, engaging policies.

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for return to office experience surveys

Single-select multiple-choice questions help quantify opinions and make it easier for employees to provide feedback—even on sensitive topics. They’re especially useful when you need to measure broad trends, encourage participation, or kickstart a deeper conversation. Sometimes, it’s less mentally taxing for respondents to select an option first, which can lead naturally into a follow-up “why” or open-ended question. This approach is also ideal when you want to spot trends—such as overall sentiment about hybrid work—and then zoom in.

Question: What is your preferred work arrangement?

• Fully in-office

• Hybrid (some days remote, some in-office)

• Fully remote

• Other

Question: Since returning to the office, how has your productivity changed?

• Much higher

• Slightly higher

• About the same

• Slightly lower

• Much lower

Question: How satisfied are you with current office policies on flexible work?

• Very satisfied

• Somewhat satisfied

• Neutral

• Somewhat dissatisfied

• Very dissatisfied

When to follow up with "why?" Single-select questions are your launch pad for follow-up. If someone chooses “Slightly lower productivity,” following up with “Why do you feel your productivity has changed?” captures depth. Without follow-ups, you miss critical context.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always include “Other” when you’re unsure if your options cover everyone’s experience. When respondents select “Other,” prompt them with a follow-up: “Can you describe your preferred arrangement?” These explanations often uncover trends you didn’t consider—fuel for policy innovations.

Should you include an NPS question in return to office experience surveys?

Let’s talk about Net Promoter Score (NPS), the go-to measure for gauging overall sentiment. NPS is a simple, universally understood metric that asks employees to rate their likelihood to recommend the company as a workplace, based specifically on their current office experience. This gauge is highly actionable when measuring shifts over time—especially since research shows that engagement is typically higher among remote and hybrid employees versus fully on-site staff [1]. Tracking NPS after a return to the office gives you a consistent, benchmarked reading to compare across cohorts and timeframes.

If you want to add an NPS question to your survey, you can use a ready-made template or instantly create an NPS survey for employees about return to office experience.

The power of follow-up questions

One of the most powerful techniques for extracting richer insights is asking smart, targeted follow-up questions—especially when using a conversational survey platform like Specific. You can read about automatic AI follow-up questions to see how this is transforming survey design.

We’ve seen over and over that unfollowed answers lead to ambiguity or missed context. For example:

• Employee: “I don’t feel as focused in the office.”

• AI follow-up: “Can you share what about the office environment makes it harder to focus?”

Without that follow-up, all you’d know is “focus is down.” With it, you can link dip in focus to factors like noise, lighting, or unclear policies—real, actionable insight.

How many follow-ups to ask? Best practice is 2-3 targeted follow-ups per answer, striking a balance between depth and survey fatigue. Specific enables you to set this threshold and allows for skipping when enough detail is captured—ensuring you never overwhelm your respondents.

This makes it a conversational survey: the interaction feels fluid, not static. Follow-ups maintain engagement, keep the conversation natural, and replicate a thoughtful interview—right inside the survey.

AI-powered analysis, even for text-heavy responses: analyzing lots of free-text answers is usually daunting. But with AI survey response analysis, it’s surprisingly manageable. Even long answers from multi-layer follow-ups are summarized and clustered automatically—see how in our article about AI-powered analysis for employee survey responses.

Automated follow-up questions are a new standard. Try generating your own survey to see how both employees and leadership benefit from the detail you capture with this conversational approach.

Prompting ChatGPT (or another AI) to generate strong questions

If you want to come up with fresh return to office survey questions—or customize one for your unique situation—it helps to work with AI like ChatGPT. Start with a broad prompt:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for Employee survey about Return To Office Experience.

AI always works best when you provide more context. For example, add info about your company size, hybrid/remote mix, goals, and culture:

We’re a mid-sized tech company with 40% of employees preferring hybrid work and recent leadership interest in increasing office days. Suggest 10 open-ended questions to uncover employee concerns, highlight benefits of returning, and gather suggestions for better support.

Next, ask the AI to categorize its questions for clarity and structure:

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

Once you have categories, you can drill deeper: pick, say, “collaboration,” and direct the AI to focus on it:

Generate 10 questions for categories Employee Collaboration and Office Environment.

This structured approach unlocks more nuanced questions—making it even easier to load them straight into Specific’s AI survey builder for instant use or editing.

What is a conversational survey, and why does it matter?

Conversational surveys fundamentally change how we gather feedback. Instead of a static form, they use AI to turn each reply into a dialogue—asking intelligent follow-ups, clarifying vague points, and learning from the conversation in real time. This boost in depth and engagement isn’t just novel; it’s a practical leap over traditional surveys, which often miss context and leave gaps.

Why use AI for employee surveys? Conversation is a more natural interface than a traditional form. AI-powered surveys from Specific drive higher engagement and richer feedback thanks to real-time follow-up questions that adapt based on what employees actually say, not just what you guessed they’d say. Most importantly, AI survey examples demonstrate how much better the feedback process can be—check out our AI survey maker or read our guide to creating employee surveys for details. Specific also offers an intuitive editor where you chat with AI to edit your survey, and its conversational format ensures both creators and employees find the process smooth and remarkably engaging.

See this return to office experience survey example now

Create your employee return to office survey faster than ever—discover in-depth insights, prompt conversational replies, and analyze all responses with a few clicks. Start transforming feedback into action, instantly.