50+ Employee Retention Survey Questions to Ask

Is your organization struggling to retain employees? Do your employees move to other organizations frequently for better prospects? Are you facing the challenge of retaining your talented people? 

How can you combat such situations?

The answer lies in asking employee retention survey questions. Conducting the survey, collecting feedback, and acting on it is the best way to understand your employees’ needs and motivation and reduce their turnover. 

Retaining the employees is crucial for the smooth running of the business and can make a massive difference to its borderline. Otherwise, the companies may have to face a high turnover rate that will further lead to poor business reputation and loss in profits. 

Hence, it is essential to conduct periodic employee retention surveys to understand employees’ sentiment, reduce their retention rate and improve the company’s performance. 

In this article, we will look at the retention surveys, their importance, and sample questions on employee retention that you can include in your survey.

Let’s start.

What Are Employee Retention Surveys?

An employee retention survey is a tool used by business owners, and managers to retain their employees. It includes companies asking a list of HR survey questions to their staff to understand their concern regarding the job. This helps companies understand the employees’ needs and what they can do to make them feel better so that their productivity increases and they stay longer with the company.

Asking the retention survey questions and analyzing the survey data is essential to address the issues your employees face that make them unhappy at work. Unfortunately, most companies don’t know their employees are disgruntled until they walk out.

So, conducting the survey, asking questions, and improving the employee experience is the key to increasing your retention rate. When you ask the right questions and take proper action, you can boost employee engagement, uncover skills gaps, and decrease absenteeism. 

Let’s discuss some sample employee retention survey questions in the next section.

Employee Retention Survey Questions

Do you know that the cost to replace an individual employee can range between 1-2 times the employee’s gross salary?

This fact clearly demonstrates the essence of retaining your employees.

Let’s look at some good survey questions on employee retention that you can use to understand your employee’s sentiments. You can always modify these questions as per your requirement.

1-10 Scale Questions

Given below is the list of 1-10 scale survey questions on employee retention:

• Overall how happy are you with your current job on a scale of 1-10?
• On a scale of 1-10, how comfortable are you working for this company?
• On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to stay with this organization for another year?
• On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied are you with your promotion at this company?
• How likely are you to recommend this company to your friends on a scale of 1-10?
• On a scale of 1-10, how happy do you feel while coming to work?
• On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied are you with the way information is shared among all?
• On a scale of 1-10, do you feel that you are reaching your full potential in your work?
• How enthusiastically would you reapply for a job here on a scale of 1-10?
• How satisfied are you with your salary on a scale of 1-10?

Yes/ No Questions

• Are you willing to leave the company anytime in the near future?
  ☐ Yes
  ☐ No
• Would you like to work at this company again if given a chance?
  ☐ Yes
  ☐ No
•  Does your manager motivate you?
  ☐ Yes
  ☐ No
• Do you feel that you are utilizing your full potential here?
  ☐ Yes
  ☐ No
• Do you get the feedback necessary to complete your job?
  ☐ Yes
  ☐ No
• Do you have all the necessary tools to perform your job?
  ☐ Yes
  ☐ No
• Do you feel valued for the work you do?
  ☐ Yes
  ☐ No
• Did you receive the training before starting your job?
  ☐ Yes
  ☐ No
• Is the amount of work you are required to produce in a specific period of time reasonable?
  ☐ Yes
  ☐ No
• Have you appeared for any interviews in the last 3 months?
  ☐ Yes
  ☐ No

Likert- Scale Questions

You can also use Likert scale questions in your employee retention survey. 

On a scale of 1-5, please rate your level of agreement or disagreement with the following statements:

Open-Ended Questions

Given below is the list of open-ended questions that you can use directly in your survey or modify as per your need:

• How well do you comprehend your career path in this company?
• How do you feel working with your colleagues as a team?
• Do you want to leave this company? Why?
• Is there anything that you would like to change about this company?
• Is there anything you would like to change about your work to make it more productive?
• Do you agree with the vision and mission of this organization?
• Do you feel that communication is encouraged in your team?
• Does your manager listen to your opinion?
• Are your colleagues held accountable for the work they produce?
• What changes can we make so that you stay longer with this company?
• If you are in your notice period, then what is the main reason for your leaving?
• Do you understand your job duties and responsibilities?
• How secure do you feel in your current role?
• Are your job goals clearly defined?
• Do you have a good relationship with your boss?
• Have you ever been discriminated against at work?
• Have you ever been bullied at work?
• What do you enjoy the most about working here?
• What do you dislike the most about this company?
• Is there anything else that you would like to share?

Importance of Conducting Employee Retention Surveys

Your employees can create or break your business.

If your employees are happy and engaged, they will have a positive attitude and work passionately to help your brand reach customers. On the other hand, unhappy employees may affect your organization’s productivity, proving to be a costly affair in the future.

In fact, according to the Gallup report, 13% of the employees in the US are actively disengaged. To address this issue, companies can take regular input from employees in the form of employee satisfaction surveys.

Employee feedback will provide you with data that highlights the issue that you may not even be aware of in the first place. You can identify problems particular to specific roles, teams, departments, or the company as a whole. As a manager, you can resolve those issues to create a healthy work environment. You can also compare answers to the same questions over time and see how your efforts change vital metrics. Even using the combination of pulse surveys and in-depth questionnaires can reveal the problematic areas. 

Asking employees about their thoughts on the company, job, culture, management style, etc., allows employers to adjust policies so that employees feel satisfied. On the other hand, failing to ask can lead them to remain unaware of what needs changing until it’s too late.

According to a study, 90% of workers said they are more likely to stay at a company that takes and acts on feedback.

In a nutshell, simply sharing employee retention questionnaires and providing them with the opportunity to share their opinions can make employees more engaged in their work and reduce the turnover rate.

Act on the Employee Feedback to Improve Retention Rate

Employee retention surveys act as a starting point for improving your workplace. The more employees you get to answer the survey, the more accurate your results are.

After you have got the knack for the employee retention survey questions, the next step is to analyze the data collected and act on itand conducting the qualitative survey will not create much impact unless you analyze the data and make informed decisions based on the conclusion received.

For this, you will need the best employee engagement tools like ProProfs Survey Maker. The platform’s intelligent reporting dashboard simplifies the process of collecting and analyzing the data with free survey templates that make designing the survey a lot easier and more efficient. Overall, it will assist you in streamlining the process of employee surveys and making effective decisions concerning employee retention, and reducing turnover.

Happy surveying!