Creating an effective employee survey questionnaire about workplace culture can transform how you understand and improve your organization.
The best questions for culture assessment go far beyond simple satisfaction scores—they explore what helps people feel included, safe, and empowered.
AI-powered conversational surveys aren’t just quick; they dig deeper with smart follow-up questions that bring clarity and context to every answer. This guide breaks down the 18 best questions for assessing workplace culture—covering inclusion, psychological safety, communication, and values—and shows you how to configure your survey for richer responses. Need to build a culture survey from scratch? The AI survey generator from Specific can get you started in minutes.
Questions to measure inclusion and belonging
If you want to improve workplace culture, start by understanding how truly included people feel. Inclusion questions uncover the unspoken realities—who feels heard, who feels left out, and where the cracks in belonging might be forming. They go to the heart of whether diverse identities and perspectives are really welcomed or just tolerated.
Do you feel a sense of belonging at work? This reveals whether employees see themselves as truly part of the team or just a visitor in the culture.
How comfortable are you sharing ideas from your unique background? Looks for invisible barriers that prevent authentic self-expression.
When did you last see an example of inclusivity at work? Highlights if inclusion is a lived daily value or a rare exception.
Have you observed or experienced bias in the workplace? Surfaces unmet needs and critical points where culture can break down.
What could leadership do to make the workplace more inclusive? Turns feedback into actionable insights for change.
Every one of these questions unlocks something different, and the best results come when the survey pushes for detail. Follow-up questions—especially if powered by AI—can gently prompt employees to share specific incidents or suggestions, without intruding or making anyone feel exposed. Learn more about automatic AI follow-up questions and how they work in real time.
Smart follow-ups: AI-driven follow-up questions can dig deeper into experiences of belonging or exclusion, surfacing actionable stories or suggestions without being invasive. With privacy guardrails enabled, you can configure the AI to avoid collecting any personally identifiable information (PII) in responses—crucial for trust and compliance.
Psychological safety assessment questions
Psychological safety is the engine of real workplace culture; if it’s missing, feedback won’t be honest, risks won’t be taken, and teams will stay stuck. According to recent data, 91% of employees now report their organizations use at least one AI technology—showing a trend toward transparency and adaptability, but also raising new trust issues. [1]
How safe do you feel speaking up with new ideas? Gauges openness: do people actually share, or is silence safer?
What happens if someone makes a mistake here? Tests whether errors are learning moments or career risks.
Do you feel comfortable disagreeing with your manager about important topics? Illuminates real or perceived repercussions for differing opinions.
When was the last time you saw someone take a risk at work? Brings out stories that reflect whether innovation is encouraged.
If you see a problem, do you feel empowered to speak up? Reveals confidence in feedback channels—and underlying trust in leadership response.
Tone matters: For sensitive questions like psychological safety, the difference is made by the warmth and reassurance in the survey’s tone. Set conversational surveys to a supportive, neutral voice—reminding respondents their answers are anonymous and only used to improve culture. Configuring anonymity settings boosts candor; when people feel safe, they share boldly. Teams can then spot differences in safety between departments or locations, patterns the AI can identify and flag for deeper review.
Communication and collaboration culture questions
Communication norms define the daily texture of work—from endless meetings to missing feedback loops. A healthy employee survey questionnaire always explores these patterns: they shape how information flows, who collaborates, and whether people get stuck or accelerate together.
How productive do you find most meetings at work? Useful as an early-warning sign for broken workflow or power dynamics.
Do you receive clear feedback on your work? Checks if feedback is timely, specific, and actionable—or absent.
Describe your preferred way to collaborate with other teams. Surfaces gaps between actual and desired collaboration styles.
When communication breaks down, what usually causes it? Pinpoints which barriers—silos, jargon, overwork—need fixing most.
Are you comfortable sharing communication challenges with your manager? Exposes whether issues are voiced or quietly endured.
Global teams: In fast-moving, international organizations, communication issues only multiply. Multilingual support ensures surveys reach every team member in their native language, capturing challenges as they’re actually experienced. Conversational survey platforms like Specific let you collect nuanced responses across languages and locations. AI-powered conversational follow-ups help you track down the root cause of specific communication breakdowns, and segment responses by office or geography for targeted action. For more detail, check out how Conversational Survey Pages work for distributed teams.
Follow-up prompts here can surface powerful examples:
Please describe a recent miscommunication and how it was resolved. What could have made it easier?
Values alignment and organizational identity questions
Every company talks about its values, but few ever check if people experience those values day to day. There’s often a gap between the values on the wall and those lived in practice. AI surveys can uncover where the disconnects are, group-by-group.
Do you feel the company’s stated values match what people actually do? Honest responses reveal hidden inconsistencies or gaps.
Share an example of when you saw company values demonstrated in action. Surfaces specifics that make values tangible or exposes empty slogans.
How do our values guide your decision-making at work? Indicates whether values shape choices or feel irrelevant.
Are there any values you feel are missing from our culture? Invites feedback on blind spots or evolving priorities.
What one thing would help us live our values more authentically? Points to practical changes, big or small, for closing the gap.
Deeper insights: You control how persistent the AI is in following up. Configure a maximum follow-up depth to balance thorough exploration (finding those hidden value-behavior mismatches) with survey fatigue. AI analysis can then trace cultural drift, misalignment, or generational patterns—spotting issues across new hires versus long-tenured employees.
Want to see the full story across your organization? Use AI survey response analysis to chat with the data, explore by tenure group, and find actionable value gaps faster.
Generate a report summarizing examples where values and daily actions don’t align, broken down by department.
Configuring your culture survey for maximum insight
A well-designed culture survey isn’t just about questions—it’s about setup, delivery, privacy, and analysis. Here’s how to get the most from your employee survey questionnaire:
Traditional Surveys | Conversational AI Surveys |
|---|---|
Static forms, single round of questions | Dynamic chat, automated follow-ups for clarity and depth |
Manual translation needed | Multilingual out of the box for global reach |
Lower engagement, limited context | Higher completion rates; richer, story-driven responses |
Basic analysis, generic charts | AI-powered theme analysis, deep segmentation by tenure, location, team |
To deliver maximum insight:
Tone of Voice: Choose supportive, conversational, or formal, based on your culture and topic.
Language Settings: Enable multilingual support—especially vital in distributed teams.
Anonymity Controls: Require fully anonymous survey completion for trusted results, particularly on sensitive DEI or values questions.
Privacy protection: Set explicit follow-up guardrails to keep AI from probing for or collecting any PII—like names, medical details, or identity markers—so respondents feel safe sharing honestly. Segment your survey responses by location, tenure, department, or any other key attribute to identify patterns that one-size-fits-all analysis can easily miss. Spin up multiple AI analysis chats, each focused on a different cultural dimension for a nuanced view of your organization. Specific's AI capabilities are designed to surface unexpected culture themes, not just confirm your prior assumptions. Want to fine-tune or iterate fast? The AI survey editor can help you refine questions, tone, and logic simply by describing changes in natural language.
"Update the survey tone to be friendlier, limit follow-ups on values questions to two, and avoid collecting job titles."
Transform culture insights into action
Great culture questions are just the beginning—what sets an effective employee survey questionnaire apart is the ability to turn conversation into change. Conversational AI surveys help you reveal not just what people say, but the "why" behind their answers. Layer in AI-driven analysis, and you can zero in on the cultural hotspots that deserve your attention next—making prioritization smarter and action more targeted.
Real conversations: Every follow-up transforms a static form into a real, two-way dialogue. When you invite people to elaborate on challenges, propose solutions, or share stories, you unlock the hidden levers of your culture.
Culture transformation starts with understanding—so take the next step. Create your own survey today and see what your people are ready to tell you.