What is the difference between employee satisfaction and employee engagement?

Satisfaction is about contentment with the job and its conditions. Engagement is about commitment to the work and the company. The two usually move together, and they can split: a person can be content and coasting, or committed and worn out.

How many questions should a satisfaction survey have?

Ten to twenty rated items and two open questions are enough to cover the main conditions of a job. Rate every item on the same five-point scale so that the items can be ranked against each other.

How often should you run an employee satisfaction survey?

Once a year is the usual rhythm, with a rerun about six months after a significant change so you can see whether it helped. Asking more often than you act causes survey fatigue.

What should you do with low satisfaction scores?

Rank the items, read the open answers for the lowest ones, and pick one you control. Make a visible change, tell people what you did and why, and measure the same item again later.

Employee Satisfaction Survey Template (Free)

Last updated October 14, 2026

A satisfaction survey asks how content people are with the job.

An employee satisfaction survey measures how content people are with the conditions of their job: the work, the hours, the pay, the tools, the manager and the team. It is a narrower question than engagement. A satisfied employee is comfortable, and an engaged one is invested.

Satisfaction is worth measuring on its own because the fixes are concrete. A low score for tools or working hours points at something you can change this quarter. This template rates eleven items from 1, very dissatisfied, to 5, very satisfied, and ends with two open questions.

Here is how to use the employee satisfaction survey template in five steps.

How to use it

1Decide what you can change
2Keep it anonymous
3Run it for two weeks
4Rank the items
5Fix one low item and say so

Decide what you can change. Only ask about things you are prepared to act on. A question about pay raises the expectation that someone will look at pay.
Keep it anonymous. Collect no names, and report by team only where the team is large enough to protect each answer.
Run it for two weeks. Send one reminder and give people time during the working day to answer.
Rank the items. Sort the eleven items from the lowest average to the highest, for the company and for each team.
Fix one low item and say so. Choose a low item you control, change something visible and tell everyone what you did.

Here is a worked example with invented names.

Take an invented company, Wexcombe Outdoor, with 85 employees across its stores. Seventy of them answer.

The highest item is your relationship with your team, at 4.4 out of 5. The lowest is the tools and equipment you use, at 2.6, followed by working hours and flexibility at 3.0. In the open answers, 19 people mention the stock system freezing during the afternoon rush.

Worked example

Wexcombe Outdoor, an invented company: one survey round

Responses70 of 85 employees
Highest itemYour relationship with your team, 4.4 out of 5
Lowest itemThe tools and equipment you use, 2.6
Second lowestYour working hours and flexibility, 3.0
Open answers19 mention the stock system freezing in the afternoon rush

What Wexcombe did

Replaced the stock terminals in its two busiest stores first, and booked the next survey in six months

Pay had been the expected complaint. Wexcombe replaces the stock terminals in its two busiest stores first, tells every store why, and books the next survey in six months.

These mistakes spoil a satisfaction survey.

Asking about things you have no intention of changing.
Treating a high satisfaction score as proof that people will stay. Comfortable people still leave for growth.
Averaging everything into one number, which hides the one item that is badly off.
Reporting results only to leadership.
Waiting a year to ask again after making a change.

People ask these questions about satisfaction surveys.

An employee satisfaction survey asks employees to rate how content they are with the parts of their job: the work, workload, hours, pay and benefits, tools, manager, team and growth. The results show which conditions are working and which are wearing people down.

These glossary terms explain the ideas behind it.

Employee value proposition (EVP)
An EVP is the whole deal an employer offers in exchange for work: pay, growth, flexibility, the work itself, the people and the mission.
Employee engagement
Employee engagement is how committed and involved people are in their work and their company, beyond simply doing the tasks assigned to them.
Survey fatigue
Survey fatigue is the fall in response rate and answer quality that follows asking people the same questions too often, especially when nothing visibly changes afterwards.
Pulse survey
A pulse survey is a short, frequent survey, often a handful of questions sent monthly or quarterly, used to track sentiment between full engagement surveys.
Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)
eNPS is a single-question engagement measure: how likely an employee is, on a zero to ten scale, to recommend the company as a place to work.

These pages on this site go deeper.

These templates pair well with this one.

Employee engagement survey template
Fifteen rated statements in five themes, plus two open questions.
Pulse survey template
Five rated statements, one open question and a slot to swap each round.
eNPS survey template
The 0 to 10 question, two follow-ups and a tally sheet for the score.

Put a score on how your team feels.

Turn promoter, passive and detractor counts into an eNPS you can track over time, with the free calculator.

Calculate your eNPS

Free, no signup required.

Back to the HR templates, where all 22 are listed.