80 questions to ask your frontline teams to improve morale in 2024

Boosting employee morale in the workplace has never been more important, and the last few years have taught us that we need to pay attention to this more than ever before. So what questions can you ask your customer-facing sales team to ensure you fully understand what they need to feel happy, supported and positive?

Why does employee morale take a nosedive?

Employee morale can dip for a whole host of reasons, perhaps your team are feeling overworked, worried, undervalued or insecure. The reasons can also differ greatly depending on the industry in which you work.

For example, employees who work in telesales may feel low because the pandemic has led to customers being less friendly towards them, or perhaps they feel uncomfortable about selling to customers during such a difficult time. If you work in the tech industry, your employees may have low morale because they feel isolated from their peers or perhaps they feel like they never get out of the house now that they work from home because of the pandemic.

Your job as a leader

As leaders, your job is to ensure employee morale is at a consistently high level throughout the whole year. In order to do this, you need to understand what boosts morale in the first place, find out what makes your employees tick and what keeps a smile on their face even when times are tough.

We suggest selecting a few questions from our list below and sending out a quarterly survey. See the generic wellbeing questions at the top of the list and the industry-specific ones below.

Get the 'Employee Questions MEGA GUIDE' for B2C Sales Staff

Questions to find out what makes your frontline teams feel happy, motivated and engaged at work

The point of asking these questions is to find out what your employees like and then do more of those things to boost their morale. For example, if they say that company announcements about sales figures make them feel motivated at work then you should put it in your plan to do more of these. If they say that they enjoy going for runs on their lunch break perhaps you should organise a running club. Take whatever they say and work out how you can build on this to give them the best workplace experience possible.

1. Why do you like coming to work?

Tip: whatever it is they like about coming to work, amplify this. For example, if they say “I like coming to work to feel like I’ve achieved something for the day.” Start giving them three big achievements to work towards for the week and congratulate them if they do them all.

2. What do you like about your manager?

Tip: If they like the fact that you make them laugh, do this more often. If they like the fact that you keep them on track, do more of what you can to keep them on track etc.

3. What do you like about your working environment?

4. What do you think is better now than it was a year ago e.g. your workload, your environment, your diet, or exercise routine?

5. What do you enjoy doing on your lunch break?

Tip: If they like going for walks, start a walking club, if they enjoy trying new lunch spots start a lunch club. Same concept for question 7 too.

6. What do you enjoy doing before work?

7. What do you enjoy doing after work?

8. What makes you feel supported at work?

9. What makes you feel valued at work?

Tip: If they say something like “I feel valued when a customer gives me good feedback, encourage them to ask for more feedback from their customers or even from their colleagues.”

10. Can you give me an example of when you felt supported and valued at work?

11. What makes you motivated for the week?

12. What makes you feel positive for the day?

13. Who has a positive impact on the team and why?

14. How do you ensure that you have a good week?

15. How do you reward yourself if you’ve had a good week?

Tip: If they say they like to reward themselves with a nice lunch, give them a small lunch voucher if they’ve worked really hard for the month.

16. What makes you feel excited at work?

17. How do you stay motivated throughout the day?

18. What is a quote that you live by?

Tip: Print these quotes out or upload them to your mobile intranet app and use them to help others stay motivated too.

19. If you were your own boss what advice would you give to yourself?

20. What do you like most about your colleagues?

21. How would you reward staff if you were the boss?

Tip: Rewards don’t have to be monetary, use a reward and recognition app to send free stickers and badges to your employees when you think they’ve done a good job.

22. What does kind look like to you in the workplace?

23. What can we do to be more supportive of our employees here?

24. Do you feel secure in your role here?

25. On a scale of 1-10 how happy do you feel here?

26. What is your favourite day of the week at work and why?

Tip: If their favourite day is Tuesday and they give you reasons why, try to make every day of the week like a Tuesday for them.

Questions to figure out what’s worsening employee morale

The aim of these questions is to gauge the factors which are making employee morale dip. Once you know the cause of unhappiness in the workplace you can try your best to prevent these situations from happening. When you stop the triggers for low morale you will notice a better atmosphere overall.

27. What don’t you enjoy about your day?

28. What makes you feel demotivated at work?

Tip: Try to curb whatever’s making them feel demotivated. For example, if their boss tells them what they have done wrong the day before every morning. Change the way the boss gives criticism and try to incorporate positive notes as well as the criticisms.

29. What makes you feel frustrated at work?

30. Is there anything you would do differently at work?

31. Is there anything about your job you don’t enjoy?

Tip: If there is something about their job which they don’t enjoy that you can change then do it. If not try to change their outlook on the thing which they don’t enjoy. For example, if they don’t enjoy doing admin tell them why it’s crucial for their job and how it can help them progress in their career, make it feel important.

32. What don’t you like about your working environment?

33. How many days a week would you say you felt negative?

34. What is the biggest contribution to feeling low whilst at work?

35. If you feel demotivated is there anyone that is good at making you feel better?

36. What makes you feel unappreciated at work?

Questions to understand what your employees think you should be doing better

Sometimes it’s easier to just directly ask your employees what they think you are doing which is negatively affecting morale. You may not like the answers but it will be much quicker and easier to fix the things that the majority of people say.

37. Do you think we do enough to boost morale at work?

38. What would boost your morale at work?

39. What do you think employers should do more to make their employees feel engaged?

40. What do you think employers should do more to make their staff happy?

41. Does the way we operate make sense?

Tip: If a lot of people answer no to this question you shouldn’t ignore it. If daily operations are wrong, tedious or time-consuming it can put a huge strain on employee morale. Ask for feedback on what they think you should change.

42. Do you feel empowered at work if yes or no why?

43. What could we do to make you feel like you are achieving your goals at work?

44. What can we do to make every day the best day when working here?

45. Which senior member of the team do you find most inspirational and why?

Tip: Whoever is mentioned the most, get them to participate in more presentations, more meetings and more group chats. They are a valuable member of your team and you shouldn’t take them for granted.

46. Which senior member of the team do you find most supportive?

47. Which senior member of the team do you find it easiest to talk to?

48. What do we do that makes you feel like a superstar at work?

49. What do we do that makes you feel rubbish at work?

50. What can we do to make you feel like a rockstar at work all week long?

Questions to ask to improve employee morale by industry

We understand that specific industries will encounter unique problems related to employee morale which is why we have created an industry-related list of questions below.

Questions to ask telesales employees to boost morale

When dealing with rejection or negative attitudes from people on the phone it’s only natural for it to affect morale from time to time. Ask the following questions to properly understand what’s keeping your telesales team from feeling happy at work.

51. Do you feel like there is someone to talk to if you have had a particularly bad day with customers?

52. Do you feel like you are properly equipped to deal with difficult customers?

53. How do you cope when you have difficult customers?

54. On a scale of 1-10 how much would you say you are affected if a customer is rude or unfriendly to you?

55. What does a good day in telesales look like to you?

56. What does a bad day in telesales look like to you?

57. What do you look forward to most when you talk to customers on the phone?

58. What do you like most about working in telesales?

59. Is there anything we can do that would make your phone calls easier?

60. Do you feel like you receive enough training to close the sale?

Asking these questions will help you to understand the impact which customers are having on your employee’s morale and what you can do to combat this. It can also help you to understand what makes your telesales employees motivated to come to work and what makes their day unenjoyable, all are key factors when trying to figure out how you can improve their morale.

Questions to ask hospitality employees to boost morale

61. Do you feel like you receive enough training on the job?

Tip: Working in hospitality is stressful if you don’t have correct training on the job it makes your employees feel useless and frustrated. Give them a mobile LMS tool which allows them to train and learn new things whilst on the move.

62. Do you feel like you are given enough support when your shift is very busy?

63. How does it make you feel when a customer complains?

64. Do you know what is expected of you by customers?

Tip: Your hospitality staff may be feeling low because customers are not receiving them well but they are confused about what they are doing wrong. Make sure you train them effectively to align their behaviour with your customer’s expectations. This will create a positive cycle which will boost morale in the long-term.

65. Do you feel fully refreshed and awake when you start your shift?

66. What would make your shift here more enjoyable?

67. Are there any factors which make it hard to serve our customers?

68. Are there any factors which make it hard for you to give the service our customers expect?

69. Do you feel confident when talking to our customers?

Tip: Confidence in the hospitality industry is crucial and confidence is also directly linked to happiness. Ask your employees what you can do to help make them feel more confident and you will see employee morale boost over time as a result of this.

70. Do you feel supported by your floor manager?

Questions to ask construction employees to boost morale

71. Do you feel safe at work?

72. Do you feel like you have the right tools to do your job efficiently and effectively?

73. Do you have the facilities you need to enjoy a quality lunch break?

74. When you are working at height do you feel empowered or knowledgeable enough to work out issues or problems.

Tip: Working in construction means that employees need to feel empowered to carry out work when a site manager can’t be there. Give them a mobile knowledge tool which allows them to look up processes and procedures whilst they are on the move.

75. Do you know what projects you are working on?

76. Is it clear what is expected of you on your projects?

77. Do you feel connected with your team when you go to different construction sites?

78. Do you feel you get enough support from the leadership team here?

Tip: It can be hard for leaders in construction firms to connect with their workforce because of the nature of their work. If you are finding it hard to make visits to your construction sites as frequently as you’d like, use a construction comms app where you can post news, announcements and videos to connect with your workforce.

79. What does a good day in construction look like to you?

80. Do you feel like you have all the right qualifications you need to succeed here?

Take the questions which you think will be most useful and use the feedback to shape your employee wellness strategy moving forward. Dig into the answers and work out what is keeping morale low and what is keeping it high. Revisit the answers when you feel like morale is dipping again and ensure you continually fine-tune your workplace to make it a happy and positive place to work. This benefits your staff and your bottom line so it shouldn’t be ignored.

Are you looking for a comms and training app that boost employee morale and boasts a 98% engagement rate?

Ocasta Engage is used by Virgin Media, Next and Tesco Mobile to keep their customer-facing teams engaged, knowledgeable and motivated. If you want to see how it could work in your organisation book a free demo.

You shouldn’t demo Engage if:

You want low engagement rates.
You want a confusing comms and training platform which does more to repel your customer-facing teams than engage them.
You want your customer-facing teams to feel overwhelmed with the amount of information they have to remember.
You like a clunky, frustrating experience when it comes to engagement platforms for customer-facing teams.
You enjoy having to go through central teams to post anything which slows the progress of your customer-facing teams down.
You don’t want a 98% engagement rate for your customer-facing teams.

You should demo Engage if:

You want a dedicated app for your frontline teams which makes it easy for them to find what they need and serve your customers in the best way possible
You want enviable engagement rates which other platforms in your business could never compare to
You want an engaged, happy and knowledgeable team of experts who are always ready to deliver the best customer service.
You enjoy working with a team of friendly experts who genuinely care about the performance of your customer-facing teams
You’re finally ready to end your engagement struggles and embrace a new streamlined way of working where everyone is always efficient and productive