Custom questions are a great way to ask about things that are unique to your organisation.
Your organisation can include up to 5 custom opinion questions and 1 custom demographic question in your survey.
Before you decide to include any custom questions, you should check to see if the topic you want to ask about is already covered by the main questions. You can find the main questions on our People matter survey questions page.
Custom opinion questions help you understand more about your employees’ experiences at work. They help you understand more about what is working well and what might need improvement. They can also be used in your People matter survey action planning.
You can either write brand new questions or use the same ones from last year.
If you had custom opinion questions last year, for each question think about:
If you’re writing brand new opinion questions, there are some rules you need to think about.
| Rule | Examples |
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Make sure you only ask about one thing at a time. If you ask about more than one thing in the same question, people won’t know how to answer and the results probably won’t make sense. |
This example is bad as it asks about two concepts - ‘senior leaders’ and ‘managers’:
This example is good as it just asks about senior leaders:
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Don’t ask about something that’s already covered by the main questions in the survey. If you do, you might end up with two sets of results for similar things. This will make it more difficult for you to use the results. |
Don’t ask this question as it’s already covered in the survey:
This core survey question already asks about this:
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Only ask about your employees’ experiences at work. Because this is an employee experience survey, employees do not have to answer questions about their personal lives. |
For example, don’t ask this as someone’s personal life is not work-related:
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Make sure you use the right type of responses. If you don’t, the results won’t make sense, and you won’t be able to use them. |
If your question is a statement, use the agreement scale. For example:
If your question asks “How satisfied are you…’, use the satisfaction scale. |
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Use plain language wherever possible. The more complicated you make the question, the harder it is to answer. This could make the results less reliable. |
For example, don’t write:
When you can ask it like this instead:
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Make sure the question is relevant to all your employees. If you ask about something people have no experience of, they won’t know how to answer the question. This could make your results less reliable. |
Consider including response options like ‘don’t know’ or ‘not applicable to my role’ if the question is not relevant to all employees. For example, the core survey question ‘Senior leaders (for example, roles like the CEO, executives or directors) act in line with the values of my workplace’ has a 'don't know' response option for employees who have not interacted with senior leaders. |
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Avoid the use of negative (especially double negative) phrasing in questions. These are more confusing for people to understand and results to these questions could be misleading. |
For example, don’t ask:
And instead ask:
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Use neutral words if you can. Asking leading or loaded questions means people will not be thinking objectively about their response. This could make your results unreliable. |
For example, don’t ask:
And instead ask:
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A custom demographic question allows you to receive your organisation results split in an alternative way, that is not covered by your hierarchy or the standard demographic questions.
The custom demographic question should ask about a unique aspect of working at your organisation, for example, the site or campus an employee works at.
A custom demographic question cannot ask about personal characteristics.
When writing your question, keep in mind the reporting you wish to receive and the actions it will allow you to take.
If you had a custom demographic question last year, review the results and consider:
Include response options for everyone, while keeping the following in mind:
If you still need help, please email us at [email protected]