Employee wellness is linked to lower turnover rates, lower healthcare premiums, and higher employee performance. In one 2024 study, 74 percent of surveyed HR professionals said they’d increased the amount of well-being support available to employees in the last two years.
Employee wellness programs come in many forms and can touch on both physical and mental health. Employers can offer enhanced health insurance benefits, childcare benefits, employee gatherings and social clubs, mental health programs, healthy snacks, exercise classes, subsidies for stress management programs and gyms, flexible schedules and work locations, and more.
In a perfect world, you could implement all of these employee wellness programs. However, resources are finite. As you consider the benefits of investing more in employee wellness, you need to determine which programs matter most to your employees.
Employee wellness surveys can help you identify which programs best fit your employees’ needs.
What is an employee wellness survey?
The purpose of an employee wellness survey is to capture the current state of your employees’ overall The purpose of an employee wellness survey is to capture the current state of your employees’ well-being: Do they feel supported or stressed? Do current wellness offerings meet their needs? You could administer the survey once a year if you have a lower employee retention rate, or more times a year if you have significant employee turnover.
Depending on what your company already offers, you can design these surveys either to help you monitor the success of your current employee wellness programs or to help you decide what to invest in as you build a new employee wellness program.
A comprehensive employee wellness survey typically checks on several major categories of employee wellness:
- Overall well-being
- Work-life balance
- Physical health
- Mental health
- Social connection
- Work culture
- Employee benefits
Each of these categories can have a major effect on employees’ overall feelings of satisfaction and support at an organization.
Why do you need employee wellness surveys?
Well-crafted employee wellness survey questions help you determine how to spend your employee wellness budget. For example, if most of your team members are parents, childcare benefits and flexible schedules might make a bigger impact than investing in healthy snacks and employee gatherings. Or, if your employees enjoy being active, providing subsidies for gym memberships might be appreciated.
Employee wellness surveys also help you monitor the success of your current employee wellness programs. As you build out your programs, the first set of employee wellness survey questions will serve as a baseline that allows you to measure success. Resend the surveys regularly and build reports to determine how effective each program has been.
What should you focus on when creating an employee wellness survey?
You can offer quality wellness programs that your employees will appreciate if you understand their needs. That’s where an effective employee wellness survey comes in. You need a questionnaire that encourages participation and is optimized to get the most accurate and insightful results.
Keep these considerations in mind as you develop the survey:
- Set clear goals that help you design targeted survey questions.
- Encourage participation and honesty by keeping the survey anonymous.
- Conduct the survey at regular intervals. Avoid scheduling it during busy times for the company.
- Make the survey easily accessible to facilitate increased participation.
- Demonstrate results — employees will be more likely to complete the survey if they see it has an impact on the programs you offer.
What should you ask in employee wellness surveys?
Employee wellness survey questions should cover the seven categories mentioned above. Getting a baseline on these categories, either in one big survey or a series of smaller surveys, will help you to develop your initial program and provide a starting point you can use to measure your program’s success.
Here, we explore 30 employee wellness survey questions to help you get to know your employees’ needs better and address each aspect of employee wellness.
1. Overall well-being: What are three aspects of your overall health that you feel good about?
This broad question will tell you what your employees are already taking care of and, by extension, what wellness programs you might not need to invest in. For this question, you could develop a list of 10–20 different aspects of health — ideally tied to potential wellness programs — and let employees select the ones they already feel good about. You could also pose this as an open-ended question and ask them to provide short answers.
2. Overall well-being: What are three aspects of your overall health that you would like to improve?
Just as the first question helps narrow down the programs you might invest in, this question helps you decide where to make investments. This could be a short-answer or multiple-choice question. The multiple-choice option can help you make quick decisions about existing employee wellness services. But making this an open-ended question might uncover needs you didn’t know existed.
3. Overall well-being: How would you rate your work-related stress levels?
This question can help organizations glean insight into how working conditions, such as workload and company culture, are affecting employee health. Consider asking participants to rate their work stress on a scale of 1–10. Use the results to find trends in overall employee stress levels.
4. Overall well-being: How would you rate your stress levels related to life outside of work?
Understanding the impact of external factors on employees’ overall well-being is also important. If many workers have both high work-related and life-related stress levels, company wellness initiatives could be considered a high priority. Frame this question the same way you frame the previous question, such as on a scale of 1–10.
5. Overall well-being: Is there anything the company could do to better support your overall well-being?
This question can help you gain insight into how employees perceive work issues and existing wellness programs and their impact on their well-being. It may be best to present this as a short-answer question to ensure a more insightful response. You could also format it as a multiple-choice question and limit answer options to things the company is able and willing to change.
6. Work-life balance: Does your work schedule leave time to take care of your daily needs?
Work-life balance, an employee’s ability to balance their job with their other priorities, is key to preventing burnout and helping your employees have rich, well-rounded lives. Asking a simple question like this one about their work schedule can point to whether you need to implement a more flexible office schedule, consider hybrid work options, or provide your employees with more resources.
7. Work-life balance: Do you feel comfortable taking your allotted vacation and sick days?
This question can help identify how much employees trust or buy into their employers’ commitment to supporting their well-being. It can also help you identify any issues with company culture or communication about taking time off. This question is best framed as a Likert scale question with options ranging from “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Disagree.”
8. Work-life balance: Do you feel able to set healthy boundaries with work?
In today’s hybrid or fully remote work environments, it can be difficult for employees to unplug from work while at home and actually rest and recharge. Workers who have this issue could also have higher job-related stress. Asking this question can inspire employees to examine their own work boundaries, and answers can indicate whether the company needs to reframe how it communicates expectations about work availability.
9. Physical health: How do you feel about your physical health currently?
This broad question provides an opportunity for employees to assess their overall health, including everything from actual medical concerns to personal fitness levels. You can frame this as an open-ended question or a ranking scale question. If you use a scale, consider adding a field for more detailed answers.
10. Physical health: How does your diet impact your physical health?
Questions about diet can help survey-takers evaluate the food they eat at the office. The answers they provide could highlight a need for the company to offer more healthy and nutritious options in kitchens and cafeterias or order healthier options for work lunches.
11. Physical health: How satisfied are you with your sleep quality?
Regular and high-quality sleep is essential to well-being, but stress — including work-related stress — can have a significant impact on our ability to get that much-needed rest. This question can provide insight into this basic but important wellness factor that impacts how employees show up at work. For participants who report high levels of stress, this question can help illustrate some of the impact of that stress.
12. Physical health: Does your job enable you to take care of your physical health?
Asking your employees if they feel like their physical health is taken care of at work can pinpoint areas for improvement and things you’re already doing well. For example, if employees report that illness frequently spreads around the office, you could take a look at your office’s ventilation and sanitation policies and rethink how your company communicates about employees coming to work when they’re sick.
13. Physical health: Does the company provide the time and resources you need for recovery after an illness or injury?
This question lets you gain insight into whether employees who took leave due to a health event felt supported. It can also highlight how your company communicates about taking time off for sickness, and if employees feel encouraged to do so or pressured not to.
14. Physical health: Does the work environment meet all of your ergonomic needs?
This question allows employees to evaluate whether their office setup and equipment fit their needs. An open-ended question format might be especially useful here, as the physical issues employees deal with can be highly specific. This question can help you identify equipment improvements if employees are experiencing ergonomic issues, or it might indicate the need to hire an ergonomic consultant.
15. Mental health: How do you feel like your job is affecting the current state of your mental health?
Work is a sometimes neglected contributor to people’s mental health. A stressful job can lead to a discouraged mindset and anxiety, while a satisfying and supportive job can help enhance overall quality of life. Asking an open-ended question allows employees to evaluate their mental state from a more holistic perspective. You can also use multiple-choice questions or rating scales.
16. Mental health: What tools do you use to manage stress?
Asking what employees are actively doing to take care of their mental health can help you understand how many employees are managing mental health struggles, what issues they’re facing, and what potential wellness offerings they might benefit from, for example, therapy apps or in-office counseling.
17. Mental health: What could the company do to better support your mental health?
This question can generate a lot of valuable insight into the wellness programs, benefits, and other resources that will most benefit your employees, and it will also reinforce the active role you want to take in improving their well-being. Consider formatting this question to accept open-ended answers, or you could offer multiple-choice answer options, like “in-office counseling,” “more wellness programming,” or “group meditation,” to name a few.
18. Mental health: How comfortable do you feel discussing mental health concerns with managers or HR?
This question is another way to gauge how much employees trust the company to provide support. In addition to letting participants rate their comfort levels with multiple-choice answers, you can allow open-ended responses so employees can share their experiences discussing mental health or explain why they do or don’t feel comfortable bringing issues up at work.
19. Social connections: Do you feel connected to your coworkers?
Social connection among employees is key to building a strong team and creating a happy work environment. A work environment that doesn’t offer strong social connections can leave employees feeling isolated and unmotivated. Asking about connections to coworkers can help you identify whether you need to put more time, effort, and funding into activities, team-building exercises, or social gatherings.
20. Social connections: What could the company do to improve and facilitate your connections with coworkers?
This is an actionable question that gives employees the opportunity to explain what their needs are and offer suggestions for how the company can better meet them. Asking this question can help you determine which company events or team-building exercises will best suit the personalities and desires of your employees.
21. Social connections: Do you have a strong support system outside of work?
Social connections and community are essential for physical and mental health and well-being. Checking with employees about how their social life outside of work feels can help you identify how much you need to prioritize social events. For example, if your employees want to make more friends, hosting after-work social gatherings or in-office lunches might be welcome.
22. Work culture: Do you feel included and safe being yourself at work?
It’s essential that employees feel safe and supported at work, regardless of their race, gender, or other identity traits. An open-ended question gives employees a chance to reflect on how comfortable they feel in the office and share any experiences where they have or haven’t felt respected. Their answers could provide valuable insight into what’s working or not working in your company culture. A rating scale might also help you identify trends.
23. Work culture: How do you feel about working at this company?
This question helps shine a light on overall job satisfaction, but it’s also an opportunity for you to learn about issues with company culture or operations from an employee perspective. A rating scale can help you identify trends. You could also allow for open-ended answers so participants can share their thoughts in detail. If this question comes closer to the end of the survey, participants might be more willing to share honestly.
24. Work culture: How do you feel about the communication style at this company?
This question can help leadership get more insight into how well leadership and managers communicate with employees, and how this impacts employee morale, stress, and other factors. Do employees understand why leadership makes certain decisions? Do they feel like their feedback is taken into consideration? Answers will be subjective, which is why it’s important to allow for open-ended feedback.
25. Work culture: If someone you knew were applying to this company, would you recommend it to them, and why?
Questions that ask employees to examine the company from an outsider’s perspective can help them identify both positive and problematic aspects of company culture. While an employee wellness program might not be the only factor impacting work culture, employees who are healthy and feel supported will likely feel more enthusiastic about working at the company and recommending it to others.
26. Work culture: Do you feel supported by your manager?
How happy an employee is in their job is heavily affected by how they feel about their manager. This question can highlight issues with management — how do they feel about their manager’s communication style? Do they see paths to promotion and advancement? Are the expectations of their role clear? If employees highlight issues like these or others, implementing more robust management training could be a good idea.
27. Employee benefits: Which company benefits that support your health and well-being do you use?
While employee benefit programs are key components of employee wellness, sometimes employees don’t know about all the programs a company offers. Asking which employee benefits your team members know about and use helps you identify which programs you need to advertise better and which programs you might need to invest in more.
28. Employee benefits: What could the company do to make you more aware of the benefits available to you?
Asking this question can highlight a need for different communication types or HR materials to ensure employees are fully educated about the resources available to them.
29. Employee benefits: What are some programs, services, or subscriptions outside of work you currently invest in for your well-being?
This question highlights the ways employees invest in their own health and wellness. It can help pinpoint new company benefits, stipends, or programs that might be especially appreciated. Employees might mention paying for subscriptions to meditation apps, scheduling regular massages, or investing in gym memberships.
30. Employee benefits: What are some benefits you feel would improve your overall well-being?
Ask directly what benefits would be most helpful to workers. Trends in these responses will help you prioritize investment in the most-requested benefits and programming. Some of these benefits could even improve retention and recruitment rates.
How can you turn employee wellness surveys into action items?
Deeply understanding the challenges employees face is essential for improving employee well-being and retention. Developing comprehensive employee wellness surveys is a critical first step in meeting workers’ needs.
But how do you turn participant responses into meaningful insights that lead to action? Here are five steps you can take:
- Perform a quantitative analysis of the survey results — calculate average scores for stress levels, job satisfaction, and other factors.
- Perform a qualitative analysis of written responses to identify themes and recurring trends among employees.
- Identify and prioritize key issues based on this analysis.
- Create an action plan that includes tangible steps, who’s responsible for completing them, and a timeline for achieving specific milestones.
- Once you’ve implemented new policies or programs, let your employees know about them. Seeing that their feedback led to tangible results can help them feel listened to and respected.
Jotform: A powerful solution for developing employee wellness surveys
To conduct an effective survey and analyze the results, you need the right survey platform. Jotform is a powerful survey-building tool that can meet your employee wellness survey needs.
Easily build your survey from scratch with the drag-and-drop builder, or choose from one of over 2,000 free, customizable survey templates, including 100-plus employee survey templates.
Building and customizing your survey is simple. Add new questions, choosing from a multitude of question types, including multiple-choice, open-ended, rating scales, star ratings, and more. Add your company logo and branding. Reorder questions by just dragging and dropping them where you’d like them. Jotform even offers conditional logic settings that let you customize surveys based on employee responses.
Once your survey is complete, choose from a variety of sharing options: email, link, website embed, and QR code.
Analyze the results of your survey with Jotform’s Report Builder. It automatically generates visual reports based on the data from your survey submissions. Customize the layout and look of the reports to fit your needs.
Survey submissions are stored securely in your Jotform account with a 256-bit SSL connection. You can also encrypt surveys for added security.
With these tools, building employee wellness surveys is a simple process. Taking time to send out these surveys and analyze the results can help you understand your employees better and build a wellness program that truly suits their needs. The results can pay off down the road, with more satisfied employees and higher retention rates.
Photo by LinkedIn Sales Solutions on Unsplash
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