40+ HR Effectiveness Survey Questions to Collect Valuable Feedback

In the ever-evolving landscape of Human Resources, understanding the effectiveness of your HR practices is crucial. This is where an HR effectiveness survey comes into play, serving as a vital tool to gauge the impact of your HR strategies and policies. 

The best way to assess the effectiveness of HR services is by using effectiveness surveys to gauge how your employees feel about them.

But not any survey will do. You need the right set of targeted questions to help you accurately tune into employee sentiment. 

This post will:

• List some powerful HR effectiveness survey questions to help you gather insightful responses and discover any unaddressed issues holding employees back.
• Share ways to increase the success of your HR effectiveness survey.
• Explore other approaches you can use to measure HR satisfaction.

Our goal is to help you craft a questionnaire that delves beyond surface-level inquiries, probing into the heart of your HR operations.

These questions are designed to elicit responses that reveal how employees truly perceive HR's role in their professional journey. From recruitment to training, development, and procedures and policies, each question is a step toward understanding your HR department's strengths and areas for improvement.

🧩 What is an HR effectiveness survey?

An HR effectiveness survey is a tool used to evaluate and measure the performance and impact of an organization's Human Resources department. 

This type of employee feedback survey aims to assess how well the HR function meets the organization's and its employees' needs.

It typically covers various aspects of HR activities, including talent management, recruitment, training and development, benefits administration, and compliance with labor laws.

"The HR department is responsible for bridging the gap between employees and the organization. Successful HR teams strive to provide a positive experience for employees and make sure that their performance aligns with the company's objectives. They foster a culture that encourages growth and development and motivates employees to take responsibility for their roles." Matthew Ramirez, Founder of Rephrase Media.

This survey is usually conducted anonymously and can be distributed to all employees or a representative sample, including management and staff, to comprehensively understand the HR department's effectiveness. The results are then used to make data-driven decisions for improving HR strategies and operations.

A good HR effectiveness survey mixes Likert scale, open-ended, multiple-choice, long-answer, short-answer, and rating-based questions. This allows you to gather comprehensive insights, not just surface-level data on the state of your HR functions.

Collecting direct feedback from employees can help you understand how your HR team is performing in managing talent, implementing initiatives, communicating with employees, and creating a positive and healthy work environment.

HR effectiveness surveys also enable you to:

• Uncover gaps in HR services that may cause employee disengagement.
• Identify potential or existing friction areas that are ripe for improvement.
• Generate new ideas on increasing employee satisfaction and morale straight from their mouths.
• Measure HR performance over time and track which strategies yield the most results.
• Learn how employees feel about your current HR activities and their desired changes.
• Discover trends and make data-driven decisions about HR practices and policies.

❓ 43 HR effectiveness survey questions 

Here are some questions you can include in your HR satisfaction survey to measure performance across different HR service areas and identify opportunities to revamp your HR strategy.

🗣️ Communication practices

1. When did you last interact with the HR team professionally?

2. Is the HR team polite, considerate, and respectful in their interactions?

3. Do you know who to reach out to with HR-specific questions?

4. Are policy changes in the company communicated to you on time?

5. Does HR respond to your inquiries and questions on time?

6. Are you confident that any conversations with HR are confidential?

7. How well does the company promote and enable open, honest, and transparent communication?

👀 Reasoning behind this line of questions: The methods, frequency, and quality of HR communications can increase or diminish employees' trust in the service and hinder their ability to do their jobs well. 

👀 HR accessibility

8. How approachable is the HR team?

9. Is getting information from HR more difficult than it should be?

10. Are you comfortable going to HR with questions, complaints, or concerns?

11. Do the HR procedures required to do your job include unnecessary steps?

👀 Reasoning behind this line of questions: Since HR is the driver behind the wheel of many organizational operations such as compensation, policy implementation, performance reviews, and more, the service needs to be readily available to everyone when needed.

💸 Payroll and benefits administration

12. In the last [X] months, have you contacted HR for help with the following benefits services: payroll information, health insurance, annual/sick leave, dental insurance, training reimbursement, and/or retirement benefits?

13. Did you easily understand the information you received about perks and benefits?

14. Do you know how to access your employee benefits?

15. Are current HR policies effective in motivating and rewarding employees?

16. Does HR promote employee wellness and work-life balance?

👀 Reasoning behind this line of questions: The process for accessing rewards offered by the company needs to be accessible. Otherwise, employees will end up feeling frustrated or cheated.

📝 Procedures and policies

17. What's your opinion on the quality and effectiveness of HR policies?

18. Does the HR department promote and maintain the company's culture and performance standards well?

19. Does the company do a great job of promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace?

20. Do you think HR actions or decisions are biased in favor of any person or group?

21. Does the HR team continuously improve the work culture and environment?

22. Are HR procedures and policies appropriately communicated?

👀 Reasoning behind this line of questions: If the guidelines HR is creating are not fair or enforced consistently, it can harm employee relations and job performance. 

🧲 Recruitment and hiring

23. Have you collaborated with HR in recruitment activities, and in what capacity (e.g., you interviewed for a role, served as a hiring manager, was part of the selection committee)?

24. Are current processes for recruiting new employees effective?

25. Are you satisfied with how long it takes to fill vacant positions?

26. Rate how well the HR team attracts and hires qualified talent. 1 - Very bad - 5 - Very well.  

27. Are you happy with the quality and competence of new hires that HR provides?

28. What suggestion would you give to HR to improve their hiring processes?

👀 Reasoning behind this line of questions: If HR is not doing its best to source, recruit, and select talent for open positions, it can result in a longer time to hire, poor talent fit, and a low retention rate.

🌱 Training and development 

29. In the last [X] months, have you contacted HR for any of the following talent management services: training requests, personnel files, performance evaluations, and/or new hire onboarding?

30. Was the time it took to get HR's response to your request appropriate?

31. Is the way role responsibilities and expectations are defined in the company clear and satisfactory to you?

32. How effective is our performance evaluation system in acknowledging and rewarding your contributions?

33. Are you provided adequate learning and development opportunities to support your professional growth?

34. HR should provide employees with more training for/about?

👀 Reasoning behind this line of questions: When employees aren't given the resources and support to succeed at their jobs, they can't reach their potential and search for development opportunities elsewhere.

🤝 General services

35. In the last [X] months, have you enlisted HR assistance for the following services: grievances, company policies, disciplinary actions, performance management, or interpersonal conflict?

36. Did the HR personnel you interacted with have the relevant knowledge to address your concerns or supply the needed information?

37. Does HR have a clear understanding of employee needs?

38. Would you agree that the HR team provides good and consistent service?

39. Do you feel confident that the HR department can help you resolve problems?

40. What is one thing HR should be doing that is currently not being done?

41. What is one thing HR is doing that you would like to put an end to?

42. How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the HR department?

43. Based on your experience with the HR staff, would you recommend this company to a friend?

👀 Reasoning behind this line of questions: It'll allow you to efficiently diagnose underlying issues and improve the quality of HR support to employee expectations.

💡 6 Best practices for crafting your HR effectiveness surveys

Use these strategies to develop impactful questions and enhance the potency of your HR surveys:

1. Outline the goal of your survey

Are you trying to identify ways to improve your HR operations? 

Or do you want to measure employee satisfaction levels about specific HR activities or policies?

Knowing what you're trying to achieve, learn, or ascertain will help you focus on the survey question categories most essential to your needs. So, you'll develop targeted questions that delve into the heart of the matter and generate actionable insights. 

2. Ask relevant questions

The type of questions you ask will influence the responses you get and how insightful they will be. 

Focus on crafting questions that align with your survey objectives and can bring you closer to the information you seek.

Use a combination of close-ended and open-ended questions to gather quantitative and qualitative data that considers different employee perspectives and experiences.

3. Keep your surveys brief

The fact that you're trying to gather important information to help you serve employees better doesn't mean you should cram your HR effectiveness surveys with as many questions as you can think of.

Be respectful of your employee's time and aim for a survey length that takes between 5-7 minutes to complete. 

Any longer, you risk boring participants before they even get started or losing their attention midway through completing the survey.

4. Allow for anonymous responses

Your employees are more likely to give their candid opinions when assured that it won't somehow come back to bite them. 

Use anonymous surveys to gather feedback if you want accurate data that honestly represents what your workers think of your HR services. The promise of confidentiality can also result in increased survey participation rates.

5. Maintain a friendly tone

You don't want employees to feel like they're in the line of fire. Using overly formal language and tone when drafting HR effectiveness survey questions can prompt participants to raise their guard and offer defensive responses instead of responding truthfully.

Keeping things light and framing your survey questions conversational will engage employees and make them feel at ease.

6. Select the right survey tool

The platform you use to run your HR effectiveness surveys is almost as important as the questions you ask. 

You want a quick and easy tool to use that supports anonymous employee feedback, offers ready-made survey templates, and allows you to analyze your survey data properly.

⚖️ 4 Alternative methods for measuring HR effectiveness

If you don't want to rely exclusively on surveys for evaluating the effectiveness of your HR practices, here are other measurement techniques you can implement:

HR metrics

A good way to evaluate and understand how your HR department impacts your organization positively or negatively is by tracking relevant HR metrics and key performance indicators. 

For instance, if you want to assess your HR team's effectiveness when planning your workforce, metrics like cost per hire, time to fill, new hire turnover rate, eNPS scores, or engagement survey completion rate will come in handy.

➡️ Discover other key HR metrics for measuring the success of your HR team. 

360 Reviews

With 360° reviews, you can measure HR performance and shed light on the HR processes needing improvement by capturing feedback from all the different angles of the company structure. 

This ensures a more comprehensive and nuanced appraisal of the department's overall achievements, HR skills and competencies, and role expectations.

Using the 360° feedback framework, the entire HR team or specific team members will receive and conduct downward feedback, upward review, peer feedback, and self-assessments to determine where they excelled and what they could have done better. 

➡️ Use these 31 HR competencies to guide you in evaluating how your HR professionals are driving employee engagement and organizational growth.

HR OKRs

Creating objectives and key results for your team's different HR functions is another way to monitor progress and assess effectiveness. 

This agile approach involves setting clear and realistic goals for your HR staff and outlining the results or outcomes you'll use in tracking how they're progressing towards those goals.

Some may argue that OKRs are a superior tool for measuring performance to surveys because they deal with hard facts rather than subjective feedback. Remember that you may fail to prioritize the right HR OKRs without knowing what matters to your employees or their needs.

➡️ Check our guide for using the OKR methodology and concrete examples of HR OKRs you can set. 

Benchmarking 

By comparing the results from your HR metrics and OKRs with your company's historical data or external standards for your industry, you can correctly determine the gaps in your HR operations. 

You'll know the level of service employees expect to get from their HR representatives and where your team is falling short. 

Suppose there are any policies or processes that your HR team is having remarkable success with compared to other organizations. In that case, benchmarking will reveal that, too.

➡️ Uncover, understand, unleash: Enhance HR potential with Zavvy

Routinely conducting HR surveys is the key to unlocking valuable insights, streamlining processes, and developing personalized initiatives that boost employee happiness, job satisfaction, and productivity. 

Zavvy's powerful employee survey platform can help you create and distribute engaging questionnaires to see what your workers have to say about your HR performance. 

You can get an accurate picture of your HR's effectiveness with Zavvy's 360° feedback software and anonymous feedback tool that guarantees confidentiality, regardless of how many stakeholders you include in your review process.

Plus, Zavvy offers tons of ready-to-use survey templates, so you don't have to spend days designing your surveys from scratch.

📅 Ready to transform your HR unit into a high-achieving team beloved by all? Schedule your free demo to get started.