What Questions Should Be on an Internal Communications Survey?

Measures whether employees receive enough of the right information to do their work effectively — the most fundamental comms failure mode.

1. 1.

   I receive the information I need to do my job effectively.

   QSET-022 (compiled best-practice)

   The single most diagnostic comms item: a low score here signals a structural information gap, not just a preference issue. It is the anchor item from QSET-022.

2. 2.

   I receive important updates in time to act on them.

   Separates timeliness from adequacy — a team can receive accurate information that arrives too late to be useful.

3. 3.

   The communication I receive is clear and easy to understand.

   Volume and clarity are independent failure modes; employees can be over-communicated to with confusing messages or under-communicated to with perfectly clear ones.

4. 4.

   I know where to go to find information about decisions that affect my work.

   Tests information architecture, not just message delivery. Employees who cannot locate information reliably will behave as if they have no information.

5. 5.

   I am not overwhelmed by the volume of internal communication I receive.

   Over-communication is as problematic as under-communication; high volume drives selective reading and causes critical messages to get lost.

Assesses how openly and honestly leadership shares decisions, context, and direction — not manager-level communication, but organisation-wide executive and senior-leadership messaging.

1. 1.

   Leadership communicates openly and honestly about what is happening in the organisation.

   QSET-022 (compiled best-practice)

   The anchor transparency item from QSET-022. Note: keep this separate from 'frequently' — a leader can communicate often without being honest, or rarely but transparently. Avoid the double-barreled 'openly and frequently' per METH-003.

2. 2.

   When major decisions are made, leadership explains the reasoning behind them.

   Employees who understand the 'why' are more likely to accept and act on decisions even when they disagree with the outcome.

3. 3.

   I trust the information I receive from leadership.

   Perceived credibility is separate from transparency — a leader who shares extensively but whose accuracy employees doubt scores low here and high on the previous item.

4. 4.

   Leadership communicates bad news as clearly as good news.

   Asymmetric communication — candid about wins, evasive about problems — is a known driver of distrust. This item surfaces that pattern.

5. 5.

   I feel informed about the direction and priorities of the organisation.

   Strategic alignment through communication is what separates an informed workforce from a busy one. Low scores here predict disengagement even when day-to-day communications are adequate.

Measures whether information moves horizontally between teams and departments, not just vertically through the hierarchy. Lateral communication failure is the most common and least-diagnosed comms problem.

1. 1.

   Communication flows well between teams and departments.

   QSET-022 (compiled best-practice)

   The QSET-022 anchor item for cross-functional flow. Organisations with strong top-down communication but poor lateral flow produce siloed execution — score this group separately from leadership transparency to diagnose the difference.

2. 2.

   I have the information I need from other teams to do my work well.

   Makes the cross-team gap personal and operational — not 'do teams communicate well in general' but 'does that communication gap cost me personally.'

3. 3.

   When decisions in one team affect mine, I hear about them in time.

   Downstream-impact notifications are where lateral communication most commonly fails. This item isolates the specific failure of undisclosed interdependencies.

4. 4.

   Teams here share relevant updates with each other without being prompted.

   Proactive information sharing versus reactive disclosure is a culture indicator embedded in the comms survey — it connects to the culture page's values-alignment constructs without duplicating them.

5. 5.

   There is too much duplication or inconsistency in messages coming from different parts of the organisation.

   Reverse-scored item. Conflicting messages from different departments are a symptom of poor coordination, not just communication volume.

Measures whether communication bridges the gap between organisational strategy and individual work. 'I understand how my work connects to our goals' is a communication failure when the answer is no — not a strategy failure.

1. 1.

   I understand how my work connects to the company's goals.

   QSET-022 (compiled best-practice)

   This is a communication item, not a culture item (contrast with the culture page's values-alignment construct). When employees cannot draw the line from daily tasks to organisational goals, it is almost always a communication failure — the strategy may be clear to senior leaders but has not been translated into individual context.

2. 2.

   I understand the current priorities of the organisation.

   Separates knowledge of priorities (a communication outcome) from agreement with them (an engagement outcome). Low scores here are actionable through better communication; low scores on agreement require a different response.

3. 3.

   Changes to strategy or direction are communicated to me before I hear about them through the grapevine.

   The informal channel test. When employees hear major news informally before officially, they conclude that management either does not trust them or lacks a functional communication system. Either conclusion damages credibility.

4. 4.

   After major decisions, I understand what they mean for my team's work.

   Tests translation, not just transmission. A company-wide announcement may have been sent to everyone while still leaving individual teams unclear on what it means for their specific work.

Identifies which channels employees actually use and trust, versus which channels the organisation invests in. The gap between intended and actual channel behaviour is where communication strategy most commonly fails.

1. 1.

   Which internal communication channels do you rely on most for important work updates? (Select up to three: email / intranet / team chat / all-hands meetings / team meetings / direct manager / digital signage / other)

   QSET-022 (compiled best-practice)

   Channel reliance data is the single most actionable output of a comms survey — it tells you where to put messages, not just what to say. Run a frequency cross-tab by department or role to find divergence.

2. 2.

   Which channels do you find LEAST reliable for staying informed? (Select up to two from the same list)

   Separate 'relied on' from 'reliable' — employees may rely on a channel out of necessity while finding it frustrating or unreliable. The gap identifies where to improve, not just where to post.

3. 3.

   I can find what I need on the company intranet without significant effort.

   5-pt Likert

   Intranet findability is the single biggest driver of intranet abandonment. A low score here predicts that employees will route around the official system, using informal channels instead.

4. 4.

   Team meetings are an effective use of my time for staying informed.

   5-pt Likert

   Meeting efficiency is a channel-quality question, not a meeting-frequency question. Employees who find meetings ineffective for information-sharing will stop attending attentively.

5. 5.

   I prefer to receive important updates via: (written/async / live meetings / both equally)

   Mode preference (sync vs async) diverges strongly by role type, generation, and work arrangement. A distributed or hybrid team will show a larger split here than a collocated one.

Qualitative questions that surface the specific communication breakdowns employees experience, and that close the survey's own loop by asking what better looks like.

1. 1.

   Where do the biggest gaps in internal communication happen in your experience?

   Directs respondents toward concrete gap identification rather than general sentiment. Thematic coding of this item typically surfaces two or three systematic failure points that quantitative items cannot diagnose.

2. 2.

   What is one change that would most improve how we communicate internally?

   The action-oriented companion to the gap question. Responses here become the raw material for the 'you said / we did' communication that closes the survey loop — the same loop this survey measures.

3. 3.

   Is there information you regularly need but cannot find or do not receive? If yes, what?

   Operationalises the information-access group — employees who scored low on 'I receive the information I need' can describe the specific gap here. Match open-end themes to quantitative group scores for diagnostic depth.