Running an employee opinion survey focused on cross-team collaboration can uncover hidden strengths and pain points across your organization. This article walks you through crafting effective questions that get to the heart of how teams work together—and where things get stuck.
By asking these questions, you’ll spot collaboration bottlenecks, surface new ideas, and find opportunities to help your teams work smarter, not just harder.
Questions that reveal how teams currently work together
Before you can improve cross-team collaboration, you have to truly understand how it works right now. When I look at survey feedback, I want to know not just what people wish was better, but how things are actually getting done (or not).
How frequently do you collaborate with teams outside your department?
This question gives you a sense of how often teams actually interact. If most employees say “rarely,” you might have an information silo problem. According to 10xhire, 39% of employees believe their colleagues don’t collaborate enough. [1]
When working with another team, how easy is it to coordinate tasks and share information?
Responses here show how smoothly work passes between teams and where handoffs get bumpy. You might learn that some tools or processes work for one group but frustrate another.
What tools or platforms do you use most for communicating with other departments?
This question reveals the role of shared tech. If people are using different apps, that’s a clue miscommunication may be happening. Tools can’t solve everything, but mismatched tech stacks create friction.
On your last cross-team project, what made the experience work well (or not)?
Firsthand stories always teach me something new. This kind of open-ended question invites employees to name both bright spots and buried issues.
Don’t stop at the first answer: AI follow-up questions can dig deeper into pain points—probing why information sharing failed or what made a successful collaboration possible.
Want to see more question ideas? Check out this guide to building AI-powered surveys.
Uncovering what’s blocking smooth collaboration
Barriers to team collaboration often hide in messy processes, outdated tools, or unclear communication. If you want honest feedback, ask questions that make it safe to surface frustrations—especially the ones that stall momentum.
What approval steps slow down joint projects with other teams?
This surfaces approval bottlenecks that can delay even the simplest request.
Are there times you struggle to access information held by another department? When does this usually happen?
Great for uncovering those silent blockers—information silos and documentation gaps.
Describe a situation where waiting for someone else’s decision slowed your work with another team.
This question captures process breakdowns and highlights where autonomy is missing.
Surface-level questions | Deep-dive questions |
|---|---|
Do you collaborate with other teams? | Describe a recent cross-team project that went well (or didn’t). What factors influenced the outcome? |
Are our tools effective for team projects? | What tools do you avoid using with other teams, and why? |
Can you share information easily? | What specific information is hardest to obtain from other departments? |
What I like about using conversational surveys is that people can elaborate—offering not just a “yes” or “no,” but the real story about where things break down. If you want to see this in action, explore AI-powered survey templates tailored for workplace collaboration.
Asking what teams need to collaborate better
Now that you’ve explored pain points, it pays to look forward. Employees often have strong ideas for what would help—but you’ll only hear them if you ask the right questions.
What new tools or systems would make it easier to work with other teams?
This can spark suggestions for everything from new chat platforms to shared knowledge bases. Seventy percent of workers feel better collaboration would boost productivity and efficiency. [2]
Which processes or rules most need to change to enable smoother teamwork? Why?
Here, employees tell you exactly where friction starts—and sometimes, how to fix it.
If you could attend one training to improve cross-team work, what would it cover?
This invites ideas around upskilling and resource gaps.
What support do you wish you had—either from leaders or other teams—to help you reach shared goals?
Great for surfacing requests for more aligned incentives or clearer priorities.
Open-ended questions, paired with AI-powered probing, empower employees to share not just problems but innovative solutions—giving you inspiration that leadership may never have considered. You’re not limited to pre-written templates: you can create custom cross-team collaboration surveys with AI in minutes.
Companies using AI in employee surveys have seen a 35% increase in response rates and a 21% improvement in data quality compared to traditional forms. [3]
Segmenting feedback by department to pinpoint bottlenecks
One of the most powerful moves I’ve seen is breaking down collaboration feedback by department. What makes sense for one team might not for another—and sometimes a process works for Sales, but is a nightmare for Engineering.
With Specific, you can easily filter survey responses by department or team. This helps you see patterns that would otherwise disappear in aggregated data. For example, when Marketing complains about delays getting assets from Design, you spot a very different bottleneck than what’s slowing down Product and QA.
You can go even further by interacting with your survey results using AI. Head over to AI survey response analysis and try prompts like:
What collaboration issues does the marketing team describe most often?
Which departments report the most approval bottlenecks? Summarize their feedback.
This segmentation takes the guesswork out of prioritizing fixes. If IT and Finance both flag tool compatibility issues, you know where to focus. Perhaps Engineering cites outdated documentation, while HR is bogged down in email chains. By slicing feedback this way, you get clear, actionable priorities instead of a vague list of gripes.
When ready, you can export this segmented insight straight to your project docs—driving strategic improvements instead of just collecting more data. If you want an example of how teams interact with AI about survey results, check out this deep-dive walkthrough.
Making your collaboration survey conversational
The best insights on cross-team friction come when people feel safe speaking up—and that’s why I’m a big believer in the power of conversational surveys for sensitive topics. Fluid, question-and-answer formats don’t just gather responses; they build trust and encourage candor. Research shows that organizations leveraging AI in feedback processes saw a 24% increase in employee engagement levels, thanks to personalized, ongoing surveys. [4]
Schedule your surveys at regular checkpoints, not just during crisis moments. Ongoing monitoring keeps bottlenecks from festering and builds a culture of open collaboration.
Decide early: Will feedback be anonymous or attributed? Anonymity invites honesty on difficult topics; attached names foster accountability.
Let your survey “chat” with each employee: follow-up questions—especially AI-driven ones—make the survey feel like a real conversation, not a box-ticking exercise.
These tips help you tap into the real experience of your teams, not just surface answers. To start building an employee collaboration survey that’s conversational, actionable, and easy to launch, use the AI survey editor and create your own survey now.