Culture Survey

Your employee survey should tell you what to fix.

Q: How is this different from a traditional employee engagement survey?

Engagement measures can be included. Leadership IQ goes beyond the score by using follow-up questions, matched-item analysis, and department or manager cuts to identify what is driving an issue, where it is occurring, and what leadership can act on.

If your survey identifies low scores but you still need interviews and focus groups to figure out what employees actually meant, Leadership IQ's Culture Survey is designed to take you further.

Watch: how a culture survey turns employee feedback into specific action.About 2 minutes

Schedule a Culture Survey Call ↓

Confidential employee survey. Customized questions. Targeted open-ended follow-ups. Results analyzed by department and manager where sample sizes allow.

Leadership IQ research has appeared in

The Difference

A low survey score should be the beginning of the analysis

Traditional reporting can tell HR where a number is low. We design the survey and analysis to keep going until the data is specific enough to guide action.

Score

Ask employees to rate a carefully chosen statement.

How are we doing on this?

Cause

Use targeted follow-up questions or matched survey items to uncover what is driving the score.

What's behind the number?

Location

Break the responses down by department, team, manager, or another meaningful group.

Where is it happening?

Action

Turn a broad workforce issue into specific problems leadership can actually address.

What can we do about it?

The goal isn't another dashboard. It's to give HR enough detail that you don't have to begin a second research project after the survey closes.

See the Method

Three examples of turning a score into something HR can use

The exact questions are customized to the organization. These examples show how scaled items, targeted follow-ups, and department-level analysis work together.

Example 1: Employees can't get broken processes changed

1Score

“When I find a process that wastes time, I am able to get it changed.”

Employees rate their agreement on the survey.

2Cause

“What process currently wastes the most time or creates the most unnecessary work for you?”

A targeted open-ended follow-up identifies the actual process.

3Location

OperationsPurchasing approval process

SalesCRM administration

Customer ServiceCustomer-credit approval

4Action

HR can walk into a leadership meeting and say, “Here are the specific processes employees say are getting in the way, and here is where each problem is concentrated.”

Example 2: Employees don't think senior leadership is listening

1Score

“Senior leadership listens to the people closest to the work.”

The score tells you whether employees believe leaders are listening.

2Cause

“What is one issue you believe senior leadership needs to hear more clearly from employees closest to the work?”

The follow-up tells you what employees have been trying to say.

3Location

ManufacturingProduction targets are creating quality problems

Customer ServiceOne policy is frustrating customers

SalesPricing approvals take too long

4Action

Instead of telling executives that employees “don't feel heard,” HR can show what employees have been trying to tell them and which parts of the organization are raising each concern.

Example 3: Decision-making is too slow

1Score

“Decisions are made quickly enough to keep important work moving.”

The score identifies a broad decision-speed problem.

2Cause

“What decision or type of decision is most likely to get delayed and hold up your work?”

The open-ended answer tells you which decisions are getting stuck.

3Location

SalesDiscount approvals take too long

OperationsEquipment purchases get stuck waiting for approval

HRHiring decisions require too many sign-offs

4Action

A generic finding like “decision-making is too slow” has become three specific bottlenecks leadership can investigate and fix.

Department examples above are illustrative. Your survey questions and findings are customized to your organization.

Go Deeper

The same strategy problem can have completely different causes

In Leadership IQ research with 9,834 employees at 36 organizations, the Culture Survey showed why a broad finding like “employees aren’t executing the strategy” still isn’t specific enough to act on.

9,834 employees36 organizations7-point survey scale

72%

Believe the organization has to change

Resistance to change is not necessarily the problem.

45%

Believe the strategy will make the company more successful

Now the issue may be belief in this particular strategy.

32%

Understand how they need to think and act differently

Some employees may support the strategy but not know what execution looks like in their job.

31%

Believe they can get a wasteful process changed

Others may know what to do but be blocked by the organization itself.

Those numbers point to very different causes requiring very different actions. Repeating the case for change won’t fix a process barrier. Process improvement won’t convince employees who think the strategy itself is wrong. And explaining the strategy again won’t tell people what they need to do differently on Monday morning.

Then department-level analysis shows where each problem is concentrated

Manufacturing28%

believe they can get a wasteful process changed.

Likely action: remove execution barriers.

Sales40%

believe the strategy can be achieved without compromising company values.

Likely action: address the perceived values conflict.

Operations32%

believe the current strategy will make the company more successful.

Likely action: strengthen the case for the strategy.

Marketing24%

understand how they need to think and act differently to achieve the strategy.

Likely action: translate strategy into observable behaviors.

A company-wide score can tell HR that strategy execution has a problem. A culture survey can show which problem you have, where you have it, and why different parts of the organization may need completely different interventions.

Research figures are from Leadership IQ’s strategy-alignment dataset. Department figures represent department-level results across the research sample, not four departments from a single organization.

See the Strategy Research →

What You Receive

Everything is built to get you from feedback to action

The engagement is customized around the culture and business questions your organization actually needs answered.

A customized culture survey

Leadership IQ survey items plus organization-specific questions designed around the issues leadership and HR need to understand.

Targeted follow-up questions

Open-ended follow-ups where additional detail can turn a broad score into a specific cause, process, concern, or barrier.

Department and manager analysis

Results cut into meaningful groups so company-wide averages don't hide where different cultures and problems actually exist.

Findings, actions, and executive debrief

Mark Murphy reviews the findings with your leadership team and focuses the conversation on the problems, groups, and actions the data says deserve attention.

When Organizations Call Us

Usually, the current survey isn't explaining enough

These are the situations where a deeper culture survey can be especially useful.

The engagement scores look respectable, but HR knows important problems are not showing up in the report.

Leadership wants faster execution, but nobody can pinpoint which decisions, processes, or departments are slowing things down.

Employees say senior leaders don't listen, but HR needs enough detail to show leadership what people have actually been trying to tell them.

Cross-functional work keeps breaking down and the organization needs to know which relationships and commitments are causing the friction.

Schedule a Culture Survey Call ↓

Why Leadership IQ

Designed for HR leaders who need more than an engagement score

The survey is designed around the decisions you need to make after the results come back.

Leadership IQ has spent years conducting employee research and organizational surveys. We use targeted follow-up questions, matched-item analyses, and department and manager cuts because a company-wide score often leaves the most useful question unanswered: what, specifically, should we do about this?

The objective is to give HR and leadership a much shorter path from employee feedback to a concrete operating, leadership, or workforce-development agenda.

Mark Murphy, FounderNew York Times Bestselling AuthorForbes Senior Contributor

Questions We Get

About the Leadership IQ Culture Survey

How customized is the survey?

The survey is tailored to what your organization needs to understand. We use Leadership IQ's existing survey items where they fit and write additional questions when your strategy, leadership concerns, or culture questions require them. We also decide where targeted open-ended follow-ups will generate useful detail.

How is this different from a traditional employee engagement survey?

Engagement measures can absolutely be included. The difference is what happens after a score appears. We use follow-up questions, matched-item analysis, and department or manager cuts to identify what is driving the issue, where it is occurring, and what leadership can act on.

Can this replace our engagement survey?

It can. A culture survey can include traditional engagement measures such as whether employees would recommend the organization, whether they are inspired to give their best effort, and how they view their manager. Whether it should replace your current survey or run alongside it depends on what you already measure and which trends leadership needs to preserve.

Can we compare departments and managers?

Yes, where group sizes are large enough to protect confidentiality. Department and manager cuts are often where the most actionable differences emerge because company-wide averages can combine groups that are having very different experiences.

Is the survey confidential?

Yes. Individual responses are not reported to managers or executives, and results are only analyzed for groups large enough to protect confidentiality. The analysis can retain the group information needed to compare departments and managers without exposing individual responses.

What happens after the survey closes?

Leadership IQ analyzes the results, identifies the most important patterns and concentrations, and prepares the findings for an executive debrief. The objective is a short list of issues to investigate or fix, the groups where those issues are concentrated, and the actions most likely to create improvement.

Get Started

See what a culture survey could uncover in your organization

If your current employee survey is giving you scores but not enough answers, schedule a call with us. We'll talk through what you're trying to understand and whether a Leadership IQ Culture Survey makes sense for your organization.

Schedule a culture survey call

Choose a time that works for you. We'll use the conversation to understand the workforce or culture issues you want better data on.

No generic demo. We'll talk specifically about what you need your survey to uncover.