Running an employee wellbeing pulse survey with great questions during manager check-ins can transform how you understand and support your team's mental health and job satisfaction.
The right questions, combined with AI-powered follow-ups, can uncover insights that traditional surveys miss.
In this guide, I’ll share the most effective questions and show how to implement them using conversational surveys that actually spark real dialogue.
Essential questions for employee wellbeing pulse surveys
If you want honest, useful answers, you need questions that cut through routine check-ins. Here are the ones I always recommend for manager-led employee wellbeing pulses:
1. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your overall wellbeing?
Nothing beats the 1–10 scale for quickly pinpointing how someone really feels. It’s a quick heat check for both burnout risk and satisfaction, and lets you track changes over time. Ask this every pulse.
2. How do you feel about your work-life balance right now?
Employees consistently rate work-life balance as one of the biggest drivers of engagement and retention. Teams with strong work-life support are up to 21% more productive and 41% less likely to be absent than those without it. [1] This question opens the door to understanding whether your team's balance is sustainable.3. What specific changes would help you achieve a better work-life balance?
Open-ended, targeted questions like this turn complaints into concrete ways to help. You'll uncover practical ideas—like resetting deadlines or clarifying expectations—that you might never have considered. [2]
4. Do you feel comfortable discussing your emotions and wellbeing with your manager or colleagues?
Psychological safety is the foundation of trust. If employees hesitate to talk about wellbeing, broader support initiatives might fall flat. This helps you measure openness and trust in your workplace culture. [3]
5. What are your career goals for the next six to twelve months?
Wellbeing doesn’t just mean “not burnt out”—people thrive when they’re growing. This question lets you spot if someone feels stagnant and find opportunities to stretch them. [4]
Framing these questions conversationally—so they sound like genuine curiosity, not an interrogation—makes it easier for employees to be open. With a tool like the Specific AI survey generator, you can instantly create custom questions, and let the AI suggest follow-ups tailored for your team’s needs.
Setting up wellbeing ratings with tailored AI follow-ups
I always start my pulses with a 1–10 wellbeing rating. It’s simple, but it helps you know exactly where to focus.
The magic happens when you use AI follow-ups that instantly adapt to each person's answer—this turns a routine rating into a real conversation. Here’s how to make it work effectively:
Low scores (1–4): AI kicks in with deeper questions about what’s challenging, what help they need, and any urgent issues. This is where quick action matters.
Medium scores (5–7): AI explores what’s working and where things could be better—maybe the workload is creeping up, or there’s stress bubbling under the surface.
High scores (8–10): AI captures what’s driving satisfaction and how to keep it up. You don’t just want to fix problems—you want to double-down on what’s working.
With Specific's automatic AI follow-up feature, these dynamic probes shift in real time, making the survey feel more like a casual chat than a form. Here’s an example of what a follow-up might look like:
You rated your wellbeing as a 4. What’s been the hardest part of your week? Is there anything I can support you with right now?
Because each answer instantly guides the next question, you’ll never miss critical context—and employees feel truly heard.
Making check-ins feel like conversations, not interrogations
Why do old-school wellbeing surveys fall flat? They’re too formal, feel anonymous, and usually just scratch the surface. Employees end up giving safe, vague answers—so managers miss the real story.
Conversational surveys do the opposite. They mimic the flow of a natural manager-employee chat, and have three big benefits:
Builds trust: When a question lands like a human conversation, people drop their guard.
Encourages openness: Judgment falls away, so employees tell you what’s really on their mind.
Captures context: Each follow-up draws out the “why” and “how,” not just the “what.”
You can shape the tone of your survey to match your culture—maybe you want it super casual, highly professional, or especially empathetic. With the Specific AI survey editor, you literally describe the vibe and the AI updates your questions on the spot.
Traditional survey | Conversational survey |
|---|---|
Formal and rigid | Natural and flexible |
One-size-fits-all | Personalized |
Limited engagement | High engagement |
Best of all, managers can launch page-based conversational surveys—shared by link—for their pulses. No product installation needed, just modern, interactive survey delivery that fits any workflow.
Analyzing wellbeing trends by team with AI
Collecting answers is great—but getting real value means slicing that data by team, department, or location. Otherwise, you’ll miss the patterns that matter. AI-powered analysis chats make it super easy to turn employee feedback into clear, actionable trends.
When I want to dive deep, I use Specific’s AI survey response analysis to chat about themes, issues, and success stories within and across teams.
Team-level insights:
Find out which teams need immediate support—so you can prioritize help
Compare wellbeing scores side by side, revealing strengths and blind spots
Theme extraction:
AI groups together recurring challenges (like workload, remote work stress) or highlights what’s working.
Saves hours combing through comments by distilling the big insights automatically.
For fast, focused analysis, here are some example prompts you could enter in your AI analysis chat:
Which teams showed the biggest drop in wellbeing compared to last month?
Use this prompt to spot urgent issues and respond quickly, before problems spread.
What are the top three challenges employees mentioned when discussing stress?
This helps you see what issues are most common and design targeted initiatives.
Summarize positive feedback from employees who rated their wellbeing 9 or 10.
Great for learning what your high-performing teams are getting right—so you can replicate their success elsewhere.
You’re never locked into a single path. Create multiple analysis threads, and explore every angle that matters for your leadership team or HR partners.
Start measuring employee wellbeing today
Regular wellbeing pulse surveys are your best bet for surfacing issues, building trust, and supporting every person on your team.
If you want next-level check-ins—where employees actually open up, where insights come alive, and where action is immediate—conversational surveys in Specific deliver. Delay these, and you’re missing insight that could make your team stronger and happier.
Make it simple: with Specific, you’ll get the best user experience for engaging, AI-powered wellbeing pulses. Create your own survey and unlock the real story behind your team's wellbeing.