Describe your workforce, channels, and listening goal. Makeform creates an editable employee survey covering clarity, relevance, timing, leadership messages, channel preferences, and open feedback.
Send responses to Slack, Google Sheets, and Zapier.
Sample prompts for the survey builder
Choose a starting point, tailor it, or send it to the builder. Revise before publishing.
Audience
Employees across departments and locations
Format
Anonymous pulse with scales and comments
Prompt size
267 chars
Example survey structure
Anonymous pulse with scales and comments
Which company channels have you used?
How clear and relevant are company updates?
Do you understand current priorities?
What is one communication change you would make?
Suggested analysis tags
Message clarity
Channel fit
Follow-up needed
Name a specific period and your real channels. Recent experiences produce more actionable answers than communication in general.
Step 1
Define
audience, period, channels, and decisions
Step 2
Generate
scales, choices, branches, and comments
Step 3
Share
one clear invitation across the workforce
Step 4
Respond
report themes and the actions that follow
Measure communication, not popularity
Separate message quality from delivery to identify changes to content, channels, timing, or manager cascade.
Keep five-point scales in one direction. Add Not applicable so missing exposure is not counted as a poor rating.
Show follow-up ratings only for channels used, so employees never judge an update they did not receive.
Place a focused comment after low scores and end with one priority question that supports thematic analysis.
Choose the right survey moment
Choose a communication moment, then tailor the language, channels, and optional profile questions.
Track access, priority awareness, and timing across the full channel mix.
Learn whether supervisors received context, held conversations, and answered employee questions.
Measure reach and comprehension after a campaign, launch, or leadership event.
Repeat core readiness questions while rotating items for the current change phase.
Survey workflow
Set a listening goal, build a short survey, and share what happens next.
Tell Makeform whether you are choosing channels, reviewing a campaign, improving access, or checking change readiness.
Replace generic choices with real channel names and remove profile fields you will not analyze.
Preview on a phone, test branches, and confirm every rating scale runs in one direction.
Group findings by mechanism, choose actions, assign owners, and tell employees what happens next.
Pick a listening format
Choose the smallest format that covers the decision and leaves room for follow-up.
Field guide
Use these six modules as a question map. Keep core measures stable between rounds and rotate event-specific questions.
Reach and access
Ask about exposure before channel ratings. Employees on different shifts may have very different access to email, intranet pages, chat, or meetings.
Clarity and relevance
Separate clear writing from useful content. An update may read well but still bury the requested action or omit role-specific context.
Timing and volume
Ask whether updates arrive early enough, at a workable frequency, and without unnecessary repetition. Use channel follow-ups to locate overload or delay.
Leadership and managers
Managers often translate leadership priorities for their teams. Measure the original message and local conversation separately.
Comprehension and action
For important campaigns, include a neutral comprehension question or ask respondents to state the next action in their own words.
Preferences and comments
Name a situation in preference questions because urgent alerts and background strategy need different formats. End with one specific improvement prompt.
Related tools
Use a focused survey for each adjacent employee listening job.
FAQ
Practical answers for communications and HR teams planning an employee listening cycle.
An internal communications survey asks how effectively workplace information reaches employees and helps them act. It measures access, clarity, relevance, timing, leadership messages, manager follow-through, preferences, and unanswered questions during a defined period or campaign.
Ask which channels employees used; whether updates were clear, relevant, and timely; whether priorities are understood; where they seek answers; and which channels fit different messages. End with one focused improvement question.
Match length to scope. A pulse needs a few stable measures and one comment; a channel audit may rate access, usefulness, and timing separately. Show follow-ups only for channels used and remove profile questions you will not analyze.
Choose an identity setting and explain it plainly. If follow-up is unnecessary, avoid names and email addresses and make profile fields optional. Otherwise, offer an optional contact field and state who sees it.
Collect only grouping fields tied to decisions, use broad options, and include Prefer not to say. Keep rating wording and direction consistent. Report actionable patterns without presenting tiny slices that may feel identifiable.
Use a cadence your team can support with visible action. A pulse can follow a change phase; a broad review can run less often. Schedule analysis and employee follow-up before sending the invitation.
Yes. Makeform offers unlimited free forms and responses, so you can generate, edit, publish, and repeat the survey without a response cap. The paid tier removes the Makeform badge.
Review reach separately from message quality and group comments into access, clarity, timing, relevance, manager cascade, and trust themes. Choose changes with owners and dates, then share what was heard and what happens next.
Listen before your update.
