10 survey questions to identify (and prevent) employee burnout

Burnout in the workplace

It is the responsibility of an empathic employer to support and uncover if employees are struggling, so you can prevent burnout from occurring, or getting worse within your teams.

After all, employee burnout usually isn’t something that just goes away on its own. If it’s left to develop, employees suffering from burnout can develop more serious physical and physiological illnesses such as depression, anxiety and hypertension.

To combat this growing issue, organisations large and small are turning to employee burnout surveys as their solution.

Burnout surveys give you all you need to know about the state of your organisation, and your employees in relation to burnout.

When you know if/ how employees need support, it’s easier to make positive workplace changes to help them.

Preventative burnout questionnaires also work wonders in helping to stop employees from developing full-fledged burnout, as you’ll be more likely to catch any issues early than organisations without regular employee feedback.

Employee survey question structure

Before we dive into burnout questions to ask your employees, let’s take a look at our recommended question structure. We believe that all questions should be:

• Clear and simple to understand

• Not leading employees towards an answer

• Followed up by a text response, to give you qualitative data

• Followed up by an action, to create positive change and show employees you value their responses.

The QFA Framework

Examples of our question (Q), follow up (F) and action (A) employee survey framework.

Survey questions to identify and prevent employee burnout

• How would you rate your overall stress levels when you’re at work?
  Answer type: Scale 1 – 10  (Very low – Very high)
• How would you rate your mental health at work?
  Answer type: Scale 1 – 10  (Very bad – Very good)
• How would you rate your ability to complete your current workload in your contracted time?
  Answer type: Scale 1 – 10  (Never – Always)
• How would you rate the ratio of staff in your team to the amount of work needing to be completed?
  Answer type: Scale 1 – 10  (Very bad – Very good)
• How often do you have to work overtime to finish your work?
  Answer type: Scale 1 – 10  (Never – Very often)
• How often are you able to take mental breaks from your work, when needed?
  Answer type: Scale 1 – 10  (Never – Very often)
• How often are you able to engage in physical fitness outside of work?
  Answer type: Scale 1 – 10  (Never – Very often)
• How often do you start the day feeling refreshed and full of energy?
  Answer type: Scale 1 – 10  (Never – Very often)
• How comfortable are you asking for time off when you feel the need?
  Answer type: Scale 1 – 10  (Very uncomfortable – Very comfortable)
• How comfortable are you to go to your manager if you experience workplace stress?
  Answer type: Scale 1 – 10  (Very uncomfortable – Very comfortable)

Follow-up questions

Follow-up questions are great for gaining more insight.

Unlike your main question, a follow-up question lets your employees give text-based (qualitative) answers so they can add more context to their responses. Examples of follow-up questions you could use in an employee burnout survey include:

• Why do you feel this way?

• What can we do to improve this score?

• What can we do to improve this for you?

• Please give more detail.

Stribe employee engagement and wellbeing surveys

If you’d like a platform that takes all the legwork out of surveying your employees, we’re here to help.

Stribe’s surveys make it simple for organisations to engage their employees, especially for those who are the hardest to reach. Our people science team are always on hand too, helping you to create, plan and launch successful surveys – as well as maximising the rest of the tools within the platform.

Book a 30 minute demo

About the author

Lucy Harvey

Lucy Harvey, COO at Stribe, has 11+ years’ experience in purpose-driven leadership roles across health, wellbeing, internal communications, employee engagement, and marketing. She is passionate about creating workplaces where people are happy, fulfilled, and feel comfortable and safe to talk.