Describe your workforce and DEI goals. Makeform creates an anonymous employee survey covering belonging, fairness, voice, opportunity, optional demographics, and open comments.
Send responses to Google Sheets, Slack, and Zapier.
Sample prompts for the survey builder
Choose a starting point, tailor it, or send it to the editable Makeform builder.
Audience
Employees across departments, levels, and locations
Format
Anonymous pulse survey with five-point agreement scales
Prompt size
389 chars
Example survey structure
Anonymous pulse survey with five-point agreement scales
I feel respected and included on my team
I can speak up without fear of unfair treatment
People have fair access to development opportunities
What is one change that would improve inclusion?
Suggested analysis themes
Belonging
Fair opportunity
Speak-up climate
Keep identity questions optional and avoid reporting groups small enough to reveal respondents.
Step 1
Define
choose decisions, themes, and audience
Step 2
Protect
remove identifiers and make demographics optional
Step 3
Measure
collect consistent scales and careful comments
Step 4
Act
share themes, owners, and follow-up dates
Why survey design matters
Neutral statements reveal differences in belonging, voice, consistency, and access.
Explain what is collected, who reviews responses, how results are grouped, and why comments should omit names.
Use one labeled agreement scale, with Not applicable or Unsure when employees cannot judge an item.
Group questions by decisions, then give each action an owner and update date.
Four useful lenses
Separate the survey into experiences that HR and leaders can recognize and address.
Ask whether people feel accepted, respected, and included in formal and informal interactions.
Measure whether employees can disagree, raise concerns, and expect a fair response.
Cover assignments, information, mentoring, development, recognition, flexibility, and advancement.
Ask whether leaders seek perspectives, explain decisions, apply standards consistently, and report progress.
Survey workflow
Build around decisions, protect privacy, test the experience, and report findings without exposing small groups.
Specify whether you need a baseline, initiative check, experience comparison, or process priority.
Remove leading questions, keep identity fields optional, and avoid demographic combinations that isolate someone.
Check wording, scales, accessibility, mobile completion, conditional paths, and identifying questions.
Report grouped patterns, suppress tiny segments, assign owners, and reuse core items next time.
Survey approaches
Tie every item to an observable experience and let respondents decline or explain.
Field guide
Use six focused sections, stable core scales, and open text for context ratings cannot capture.
Survey introduction
State the purpose, response window, data collected, reviewers, and reporting method. Ask respondents to omit names and distinctive details.
Belonging and respect
Ask directly about being valued, included, and respected. Separate team experience from the wider organization.
Voice and speak-up climate
Use observable behaviors: contributing, challenging ideas, reporting exclusion, and expecting a fair response.
Equity and opportunity
Break fairness into assignments, feedback, recognition, learning, flexibility, and promotion. Add Not applicable for unobserved processes.
Optional demographics
Use only identity data needed for analysis. Offer broad options, multiple selection where relevant, self-describe, and Prefer not to answer.
Open comments and follow-up
Ask one or two questions about themes and changes, not named people. Direct individual concerns to the appropriate workplace channel.
Related tools
Pair a DEI baseline with focused engagement, satisfaction, demographic, and anonymous feedback tools.
Collect inclusion ideas and barriers between surveys.
Open toolMeasure motivation, support, growth, and intent to stay.
Open toolDesign optional identity questions and broad groups.
Open toolExplore workload, management, resources, and recognition.
Open toolPulse on energy, relationships, support, and sentiment.
Open toolFAQ
Answers for HR leaders planning anonymous employee research.
It measures employee experiences of belonging, respect, voice, fairness, opportunity, and leadership behavior. Optional demographics can reveal group differences. The goal is actionable patterns, not one DEI score.
Ask whether employees feel respected, can disagree safely, receive fair assignments and development access, understand promotion criteria, and trust responses to exclusion. Include Not applicable and optional comments.
Avoid names, emails, IDs, exact titles, and unnecessary sign-in data. Keep demographics optional, restrict raw-response access, suppress small groups, and warn against names in comments. Small teams need extra care.
Usually not. Ask only what a defined analysis needs, explain why, offer inclusive options, and include self-describe and Prefer not to answer. Remove combinations that could reveal someone.
Use a consistently labeled five-point agreement scale, plus Not applicable or Unsure when needed. Avoid two ideas in one item and retain core questions for later comparisons.
Survey only as often as you can review, act, and report progress. Combine a fuller baseline with shorter pulses, keeping core items stable and adding few topical questions.
Yes. Makeform provides unlimited free forms and responses. Generate, edit, publish, and repeat surveys without a response cap; the paid tier removes the Makeform badge. Review privacy and wording before sharing.
Group ratings by actionable themes, suppress small cuts, and protect identifiable comments. Share findings, decisions, action owners, and update dates. Use a later pulse to check the targeted experience.
Turn employee experience into action.
