Describe your workforce and learning decision. Makeform creates a focused survey of capabilities, priorities, career direction, barriers, and preferred formats so L&D can plan from employee input.
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Sample prompts for the survey builder
Choose a complete prompt, adapt it, or send it into the builder. Each example is a starting structure, not a live AI result.
Audience
Employees across departments
Format
Anonymous ranked survey
Prompt size
287 chars
Example survey structure
Anonymous ranked survey
Department and tenure band
Rate confidence across core capabilities
Rank your top three development priorities
Preferred learning formats and schedule
What support would help you progress?
Suggested analysis tags
Urgent skill gaps
Career pathways
Delivery preferences
Ask employees to rank capabilities and add a missing option. This forces priorities without closing the list.
Step 1
Listen
collect goals, gaps, and barriers
Step 2
Segment
compare needs by role or team
Step 3
Prioritize
rank high-value learning investments
Step 4
Act
share decisions and revisit progress
Better needs analysis
Separate current confidence, future importance, employee interest, and participation constraints to see whether the answer is training, practice, manager support, or career clarity.
Rate confidence and future job importance separately. A weak skill becomes urgent when it also matters to upcoming work.
Rankings make employees choose among topics. Add an open option so your list does not predetermine every answer.
Show targeted follow-ups by role, experience, or goal so employees skip irrelevant capability lists.
Designed around the decision
Match the survey to the decision: budget planning needs comparable rankings; individual growth planning needs reflection and a next step.
Map skill gaps, format preferences, and barriers before allocating the learning budget.
Collect strengths, aspirations, stretch interests, and support needs before development planning.
Test demand for a cohort, mentoring program, academy, or series before building it.
Identify confidence gaps and support needs before workplace change reaches employees.
Survey workflow
Build around one decision, keep questions answerable, and report how employee input shaped the plan.
Name the decision, employee groups, capability list, and planning horizon.
Use familiar capability language, mark optional context, and branch follow-ups by role or goal.
Explain the survey's use, anonymity, deadline, and contact, then invite thoughtful responses.
Compare priorities, confidence, and barriers. Share chosen actions and schedule a follow-up pulse.
Choosing a method
Use a survey for comparable employee input, then add conversations and work evidence when deeper context matters.
Field guide
Use six focused sections for comparable signals and actionable context. Adapt the language and scales to your organization.
Role context
Collect only context you will analyze. If anonymity matters, avoid field combinations that could reveal someone in a small team.
Capability gaps
Rate present confidence and next-year importance separately with one concise capability set. Interest alone can become a wish list.
Priorities
Limit and rank development choices, then ask what work problem each priority would help solve.
Career direction
Ask about responsibilities or directions employees want to explore, including expertise, broader scope, lateral moves, and leadership.
Access and format
Ask which formats, timing, languages, and devices are practical, plus barriers such as workload, access, or unclear relevance.
Application and follow-up
Ask how employees would apply a priority and what support helps. Keep follow-up interest separate from enrollment or approval.
Related tools
Assess capabilities, gather program feedback, and turn workforce themes into development conversations.
Assess role requirements and capability gaps before selecting investments.
Open toolInventory current skills and areas needing validation or practice.
Open toolCollect reactions and application plans after learning.
Open toolExplore aspirations, mobility interests, barriers, and career support.
Open toolMeasure workplace conditions that influence growth and contribution.
Open toolGather multi-perspective observations for focused development conversations.
Open toolFAQ
Practical answers for L&D and HR teams planning an employee development needs survey.
It asks employees about capabilities, future skill needs, career interests, learning methods, and barriers. L&D and HR use the patterns to prioritize support alongside manager conversations and work data.
Include role context, current confidence, future-important skills, ranked priorities, career direction, learning preferences, barriers, and manager support. Add an open option, but keep every question tied to a planning decision.
Use anonymity when candid workforce patterns matter more than follow-up. Use names for individual growth planning. Explain the choice, collect only useful segmentation, and avoid combinations that could identify people in small groups.
Limit and rank topic choices, then compare them with future importance, current confidence, and expected application. Segment carefully by role. Interest alone does not establish the best investment.
Run a full survey for annual or multi-quarter planning, then use short pulses when priorities change. Do not repeat questions without a decision to make; report actions before asking again.
Yes. Use shared questions for comparable themes, then conditional logic for role-specific capabilities. Department or role-family fields support segmentation without forcing irrelevant questions on everyone.
Yes. Makeform offers unlimited free forms and responses. Generate, edit, publish, and collect your survey without a response cap; the paid tier removes the Makeform badge. Review wording, scales, skills, and anonymity before sharing.
Check response coverage, summarize priorities and barriers, compare meaningful segments, and read comments for context. Combine findings with upcoming work and resources, then share chosen actions, deferred items, and follow-up timing.
Build development plans from employee input.
