Survey template

Team pulse survey

A pulse survey only works if people answer honestly and it stays short enough to run often. This template keeps it to a handful of questions on workload, clarity, and blockers, framed anonymously so the answers reflect what people actually think.

Best for: Managers and people-ops teams tracking team health between annual reviews.

The questions

1. How manageable has your workload been this week?

   Opinion scale

   1-5 — trend this over weeks rather than reading any single point.

2. How clear are you on what's expected of you right now?

   Opinion scale

   1-5 — clarity dips are an early warning before output drops.

3. What's blocking you or slowing you down most right now?

   Long text

   Open answer keeps it honest; a checklist would only surface blockers you already guessed.

4. If you could change one thing about how the team works, what would it be?

   Long text

   One change forces a priority instead of a vent.

5. How supported do you feel by your manager this week?

   Opinion scale

   1-5 — a private signal that rarely surfaces in standups.

6. Anything you want leadership to know?

   Long text

   An optional open door catches the thing the structured questions missed.

How to run it well

• Keep it genuinely anonymous and say so plainly — the moment people suspect attribution, the scores inflate and the honesty drains out.
• Hold the question set steady week to week; the value is the trend line, and changing questions resets your baseline.
• Act visibly on at least one blocker each cycle and tell the team you did — a pulse survey with no follow-through trains people to stop answering.
• Watch the clarity and support scores as leading indicators; they tend to slip before workload complaints or attrition show up.

FAQ

How often should we run a pulse survey?

Weekly or biweekly is common. Frequent enough to catch a dip early, infrequent enough to avoid fatigue. Whatever cadence you pick, keep it fixed so the trend stays comparable.

How do we keep it anonymous in a small team?

Drop demographic questions, report only at the team level, and never slice results small enough to identify a person. On very small teams, aggregate a few cycles before sharing numbers.

What's a healthy response rate?

Above 80% is a good sign people trust the process. A sudden drop is itself a signal — usually that a previous round produced no visible follow-up.

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