Employee Empowerment and Decision-Making Autonomy Survey

Thanks for taking a few minutes to share how empowered you feel at work. Your responses are completely confidential and anonymized. There are no right answers — we're looking for what's actually happening day to day. About 5 minutes.

In the last 30 days, how much freedom did you have to decide how you do your work, without needing approval first?

How much do you agree with each statement about your day-to-day work?

Which of these gets in the way of you acting independently at work most often?

• Approval processes or bureaucracy
• Unclear boundaries on what I'm allowed to decide
• Lack of information or data
• Fear of consequences if I'm wrong
• Not enough budget or resources
• Nothing gets in the way

Which of these would do the most, and the least, to increase your sense of empowerment at work?

• More clarity on what decisions I can make without approval
• More trust from my manager
• Access to more information or data
• More training to build my confidence
• More authority over budget or resources
• Faster approval processes
• More recognition when I take initiative
• Clearer goals so I know what success looks like

How often does your manager encourage you to make decisions on your own rather than deferring to them?

How confident are you that raising a new idea or concern with your manager will be taken seriously?

Ask the respondent to walk through one specific recent moment when they either felt empowered to act without waiting for approval, or were blocked from doing so. Anchor on the barrier they picked in the multiple-choice question and probe what exactly happened, who was involved, and what the outcome was. If their answers suggest low trust from their manager, dig into a concrete example of that; if they say they have full autonomy, check whether that's true even for higher-stakes decisions.

Optional: describe one thing your manager or company could change tomorrow that would make you feel more trusted to act on your own.

Which department do you work in? (Prefer not to say if you'd rather skip this.)

• (Replace with Department A)
• (Replace with Department B)
• (Replace with Department C)
• Prefer not to say

How long have you worked at the company?

• Less than 6 months
• 6 months to 2 years
• 2 to 5 years
• More than 5 years
• Prefer not to say

Thank you for your honesty. Your answers will be combined with your team's responses to help managers see where trust and autonomy are working well, and where they need to change.