Key Takeaways:

• Management drives retention — people leave managers, not companies, making manager-focused survey questions essential to reducing turnover.
• Recognition and feedback have outsized impact — most employees say they'd work harder if they felt more appreciated, and daily recognition correlates with far higher feelings of being valued than infrequent recognition.
• Career development is the strongest engagement lever — employees who see growth opportunities are far more likely to be highly engaged, and that effect is even stronger when employees feel their manager personally cares about their development.

You’ve heard the saying: People leave managers, not companies. While many factors play a role in improving employee retention and employee engagement, management is arguably the most critical piece.

To better understand how this plays out in your organization, your employee engagement survey needs to include questions that capture valuable data on employees’ perceptions of managers.

At Quantum Workplace, we’ve compiled 32 employee survey questions about management to cover in your employee engagement survey. You certainly don’t need to include them all, but asking questions along these lines will help you uncover insights and opinions about your managers and improve your workplace.

Top 4 employee survey questions about management from our I/O psychology experts

Feedback, recognition, career development, and performance expectations are essential pieces of the employee engagement puzzle. These 4 questions will help you drill down to those essential employee needs so you can uncover potential gaps in your management approach and focus your engagement efforts effectively.

Employees need to hear from their managers about what they do well and how they can improve. Constructive feedback not only helps employees succeed in their roles but also demonstrates that you care about them and their work.

When employees feel valued by their leaders and understand what is expected of them, they will feel empowered to do their jobs well and are more likely to be engaged in their work. 80% of employees say they'd work harder if they felt more appreciated, and recognition compounds that effect: 98% of employees who receive daily recognition feel valued by their employer, compared to just 37% of those recognized only once a year.

Survey questions about manager communication

Clear and consistent communication is the foundation of a strong manager-employee relationship. Poor communication from the top can lead to frustration, confusion, and de-motivation. Of course, it’s not always easy to pinpoint where communication may be failing. These questions can help you identify areas where communication may be missing or insufficient.

5. Does management clearly communicate performance expectations?
6. Does your manager effectively communicate the information you need to understand?
7. Does management explain the reasons behind decisions made?
8. Do managers handle disagreements professionally?
9. Does your manager explain how the organization’s future plans affect you?
10. Does your manager clearly communicate changes to company policies or benefits?
11. How frequently do you receive recognition from your manager?
12. The last time you completed a project, did you receive any recognition?

These questions pair well with regular one-on-ones where managers and employees can dig into communication gaps in real time.

Survey questions about manager trust and respect

Trust is the foundation of any good relationship, including between employees and their managers. If your employees don’t feel safe and respected at work, they will be less likely to ask questions, bring problems to the attention of leadership, and feel motivated or empowered to do their best work. That’s why it’s so important that managers foster an environment of trust and mutual respect within their teams, both of which are closely tied to overall employee engagement.

Here are a few questions to gauge how comfortable your employees are with their manager:

13. Does your manager create a trusting and open environment?
14. Does your manager treat everyone on the team fairly?
15. Is your manager responsive to your ideas, requests, and suggestions?
16. When you approach your manager with a problem, do you trust they will listen?
17. Does your manager make you feel like a valued part of the team?

Survey questions about manager effectiveness

How effective are your managers at leading? Do they have the skills, training, and resources they need to succeed? The answers aren’t always obvious—especially if your managers check off all the usual boxes of “good management practices.”

That’s why it’s helpful to ask employees directly:

18. Are you confident in the overall effectiveness of your immediate manager?
19. Does your manager have the expertise and ability to help you and your team succeed?
20. Does your manager maintain high standards for their conduct?
21. Has your manager worked to improve on issues in the last year?
22. Does your manager make consistently effective decisions?

These are good questions to ask if a manager is doing all the right things on paper (holding regular 1:1s, giving public praise, solving problems, etc.) but the team is still disengaged, it may be time to look at broader manager effectiveness strategies. The answers can help point to potential gaps in the manager’s skillset or identify tools or resources they may need to be effective.

Survey questions about career development

Career development is a key driver of employee engagement. Employees who see a future at their company and a path to grow are more likely to be engaged and motivated to succeed. Quantum Workplace's own research backs this up directly: when employees witness professional growth and career development opportunities within their own organization, they are 2.5x more likely to be highly engaged — 89%, compared to just 36% of those who don't see those opportunities. The manager relationship matters just as much: when employees believe their immediate manager directly cares about their development, they're 3.1x more likely to be highly engaged — 83%, versus only 27% of those who don't feel that support.

Managers play an essential role in developing employees and providing opportunities to grow. Use these questions to see how well your managers are coaching and developing their team and identify opportunities to close any gaps in communication or training.

23. Do you and your manager discuss your career within this organization?
24. Do you see yourself growing and developing your career at this company?
25. Do you know what steps you need to take in order to move up in the organization in the next year?
26. Do you believe you’ll be able to reach your full potential here?
27. Do you receive sufficient learning opportunities in your job?

For a deeper look at what this takes, see our guide to building an employee development strategy.

Survey questions about work-life balance

Work-life balance isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s essential to the well-being of your employees and—by extension—your bottom line. Poor work-life balance leads to higher stress and employee burnout and disengagement. In fact, one study by the American Psychology Association found that burned out employees are 2.6 times more likely to be actively seeking another job. This tracks with our own research on employee burnout trends, which found workload and lack of manager support to be top contributors.

Use these questions to help you identify how well your leaders are managing work-life balance among their teams.

28. Does your manager recognize the importance of your personal and family life?
29. Does your manager care about your well being?
30. Do you believe that generally, your workload is reasonable for your role?
31. Does your manager set fair deadlines?
32. Do you feel supported by your manager?

Choosing your survey questions is one small step in conducting an employee engagement survey. Download our Pulse Survey Templates to help you build successful surveys.

How to score your survey results

• Step 1: Turn responses into numbers.
  Use an agreement scale (e.g., "Strongly disagree" to "Strongly agree"), assign each response a value:

• Step 2: Average the questions within each category.
  Each category (communication, trust and respect, effectiveness, career development, work-life balance) has multiple questions. Add up the numeric values for all questions in that category, then divide by the number of questions answered.

Example: if three people answered the four communication questions with scores of 4, 3, 4, and 5, the category average is (4+3+4+5) / 4 = 4.0.

If you're scoring a whole team's responses rather than one person's, average across all respondents too: total all their communication scores, divide by (number of questions × number of respondents).

• Step 3: Compare that average against the interpretation table.
  The 1–5 category average is what you plug into the ranges below. The score doesn't need rounding to a whole number, decimals like 3.4 are meaningful and should be read as falling in the range they land in.

If you're using the scorecard's overall total instead of category averages:
The overall score (out of 25) is just the sum of the five category scores (each already 1–5). To compare it to the same healthy and gap-area language, divide it by 5 to get back to a 1–5 scale, then use the interpretation table as normal. A total of 18/25 is 3.6 average, which falls in the watch range.

How to interpret manager survey results

Post-survey action planning

After you have completed your management survey and analysed your results, speed up post-survey action planning with our AFTER framework below.