Employee wellbeing pulse survey: best questions mental health pulse for meaningful check-ins

Running an employee wellbeing pulse survey is one of the most effective ways to monitor and support your team's mental health. The right questions make all the difference between surface-level responses and genuine insights.

This article shares the best mental health pulse questions and walks you through deploying them every month using conversational AI to get honest, actionable feedback.

Essential mental health questions for your pulse survey

When I build any pulse survey, I start with a core set of mental health questions. These form the backbone of your employee wellbeing pulse survey—giving you a real look into the team's current state.

• Stress levels: "On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate your current stress at work?"
  This gives a high-level snapshot and helps spot sudden spikes or improvements. According to the American Institute of Stress, 83% of employees in the US suffer from work-related stress, making measurement essential for early intervention [1].

• Work-life balance: "Do you feel you have a healthy balance between work and your personal life?"
  Work-life balance issues are a major driver of burnout. Open-ended responses here often bring up unexpected blockers.

• Job satisfaction: "How satisfied are you with your current role and daily responsibilities?"
  Dissatisfaction is closely linked to disengagement and mental health decline.

• Support systems: "Do you feel supported by your manager and colleagues?"
  Lack of support is a strong risk factor for poor mental health outcomes.

• Mental health resources: "Are you aware of the mental health resources available through our organization?"
  Awareness is only half the battle—many employees still don't know what's on offer, according to Mind Share Partners [2].

• Psychological safety: "Do you feel comfortable discussing mental health concerns at work?"
  This helps you gauge whether stigma or fear may be suppressing honest responses.

• Open-ended prompt: "What, if anything, is impacting your mental wellbeing at work right now?"
  Use open questions—the most revealing answers often come here, not from multiple-choice ratings.

I always recommend blending rating-scale and open-ended questions. For really meaningful insights, follow-ups can dig into any red flags. For example:

"You mentioned high stress—can you tell me what’s causing that stress for you lately?"

Here's a quick look at how a conversational approach differs from a traditional survey:

Conversational follow-ups—especially when automated—help you understand issues before they spiral. If you want to automate thoughtful follow-up questions, the AI follow-up questions feature in Specific is built for this.

Setting the right tone for mental health conversations

When it comes to mental health, tone really does matter. How you phrase sensitive questions can mean the difference between honesty and silence. That’s why it’s so important to use empathetic, non-judgmental language.

In Specific, I always configure the AI assistant to use a "supportive" or "gentle" tone for wellbeing surveys. A few examples:

• Replace "What's wrong?" with "Would you like to share what's felt challenging for you lately?"

• Try, "Is there anything you wish you had more support with?" instead of a blunt "Do you need help?"

It’s also key to set the follow-up depth configuration. Sometimes it’s right to gently ask for more context. Sometimes, when responses touch on trauma or deep overwhelm, it’s best to respect boundaries. In Specific, I set follow-up rules that gently check, “Would you like to expand on that, or would you prefer to move on?”

Here are some strong conversational follow-up examples:

"Would you like to share more about what's contributing to those feelings of stress?"

"If you prefer not to discuss this further, that's completely okay."

Specific’s AI survey editor lets you adjust tone, phrasing, and follow-up settings just by describing how you want the survey to feel. The AI will adapt its conversation to meet employees where they are, ensuring everyone feels safe to open up.

AI-powered surveys truly excel because they can sense the tone of an answer and adapt—going deeper when the respondent is open, or pausing when caution is needed.

Question banks for different wellbeing dimensions

You’ll get more value by organizing your mental health surveys by specific focus areas. Here’s how I break them down, along with example questions for each:

• Stress management

  • "How do you usually cope when work feels overwhelming?"

  • "Are you currently experiencing signs of burnout?"

  • "Have you felt your workload has increased stress in the past month?"

  • "Which situations at work cause you the most stress?"

• Workplace support

  • "How comfortable are you reaching out to your manager with a concern?"

  • "Do you trust that the organization takes mental health seriously?"

  • "What resources—formal or informal—have you found most helpful for support?"

• Personal resilience

  • "How confident are you in your ability to manage work pressures?"

  • "What helps you recover after a tough day?"

  • "Have you recently felt able to bounce back from a setback at work?"

• Organizational culture

  • "Do you feel your mental health is respected here?"

  • "Are there aspects of our culture that impact your wellbeing?"

  • "How could leadership better support your wellness?"

Each department or team might prioritize different dimensions. For example, HR will likely focus on workplace support, while managers might zero in on stress management. The beauty of conversational AI surveys is you can build and remix question sets easily—no cookie-cutter templates required.

When crafting sensitive prompts, being respectful and professional makes all the difference. For example:

"Is there anything at work that's been negatively impacting your mental health you'd like to confidentially discuss?"

Running monthly pulses with shareable survey pages

I can’t overstate the benefits of a monthly pulse schedule for tracking employee wellbeing. Regular touchpoints help you catch trends early. Studies show that frequent check-ins improve both response accuracy and employee trust in feedback channels [3].

With Specific, you can easily create a shareable survey landing page. Here’s how I roll them out:

• Create the survey: Build your pulse quiz in minutes, using either ready-made questions or AI-generated ones.

• Distribute the link: Share the unique survey link via email, Slack, or internal portals.

• Set cadence and reminders: Choose a consistent timing—like the first Monday of each month—and remind your team.

• Customize anonymity: Enable anonymous mode for sensitive topics, so staff feel safe to be honest.

• Track participation: The dashboard shows who’s participated, so you can nudge non-responders as needed.

Conversational survey pages beat old boring forms every time—especially for topics like mental health where trust and engagement matter. People finish what they start and give fuller answers, which has been shown to boost data quality on sensitive issues [2].

From insights to action: analyzing wellbeing data

The data only matters if you put it to use. This is where AI analysis comes in. With a tool like AI survey response analysis by Specific, you can spot trends, surface warning signs, and create actionable reports without getting lost in spreadsheets.

I use prompts like these to get meaningful takeaways:

"Which patterns in recent responses indicate increasing stress across the team?"

"Summarize what employees say they need most to improve their wellbeing."

"Show improvement trends in reported stress levels over the past six months."

This approach helps you create multiple analysis threads—tailoring insights for HR, managers, and executives. The key is to always respect employee confidentiality while surfacing themes, never outing individuals or sharing sensitive details directly. Be sure to close the feedback loop by sharing what you’ve learned with the team, and clearly outline what will change as a result—when employees see action, trust grows.

If you want even deeper insights or expert prompts, check out how to chat with AI about survey results.

Start supporting your team's mental health today

Regular mental health check-ins matter more than ever. Conversational surveys help employees feel seen and heard. Create your own survey—getting started just takes a few minutes and will make a real difference for your team's wellbeing.