All templates
Employee & HR

Employee Salary & Compensation Fairness Survey

Measures how employees feel about their pay, benefits, and the process behind raises — covering satisfaction, market comparison, and priority trade-offs between compensation elements. An AI follow-up interview digs into the specific reasons behind fairness or satisfaction scores, especially where perceptions of pay and market value diverge.

Sample questions

A preview of what’s in the template. Every question is editable before you launch.

14 questions · ~7 min
Q01
Message

Thanks for taking a few minutes to share your honest thoughts on pay and benefits. Your answers are confidential and help shape how we approach compensation going forward. About 6-7 minutes.

Q02
Opinion ScaleRequired

Overall, how satisfied are you with your total compensation (salary, bonus, and benefits combined)?

Scale: 110
Min:Very dissatisfiedMax:Very satisfied
Q03
Multiple ChoiceRequired

Compared to similar roles at other companies you're aware of, how does your pay compare?

  • Below market
  • About at market
  • Above market
  • Not sure / no basis for comparison
Q04
MatrixRequired

How much do you agree or disagree with each statement about your pay?

4 rows × 5 columns
  • My pay reflects the contributions I make to the company
  • My pay is fair compared to peers doing similar work here
  • I understand how my pay and raises are determined
  • Raises and promotions here are based on merit, not favoritism
Columns: Strongly disagree · Disagree · Neutral · Agree · Strongly agree
Q05
Best–Worst Trade-off (MaxDiff)Required

When you think about your ideal compensation package, which of these matter most to you and which matter least?

  • Base salary
  • Annual bonus
  • Equity or stock options
  • Health benefits
  • Retirement match
  • Paid time off
  • Flexible work arrangements
  • Career growth opportunities
Pick best & worst per setBest:Matters mostWorst:Matters least
Q06
Point AllocationRequired

If your company had 100 points of extra investment to put into your compensation package, how would you distribute it across these areas?

  • Base salary
  • Bonus/incentive pay
  • Benefits (health, retirement)
  • Paid time off
  • Flexible/remote work options
Allocate 100 points
Q07
Rating ScaleRequired

How would you rate the clarity of the process for how raises and promotions are decided here?

Range: 15
Min:Very unclearMax:Very clear
Q08
Opinion ScaleRequired

In the last 6 months, how often has your pay made you consider looking for another job?

Scale: 010
Min:NeverMax:Constantly
Q09
AI Interview

Probe the specific reasons behind the respondent's satisfaction and fairness ratings, especially if they rated satisfaction low or disagreed that pay reflects contributions or matches peers. If they said their pay is below market or considered leaving due to pay, ask what specifically triggered that comparison or feeling and what change (dollar amount, benefit, or process fix) would meaningfully address it. If ratings were high across the board, ask what specifically makes the pay and process feel fair so it can be preserved.

Q10
Multiple Choice

In the last 12 months, how often have you discussed your compensation directly with your manager?

  • Never
  • Once
  • A few times
  • Regularly (every check-in or more)
Q11
Multiple Choice

Which best describes your department or function?

  • Engineering/Product
  • Sales
  • Marketing
  • Operations
  • Customer Support
  • Finance/HR
  • Other
  • Prefer not to say
Q12
Multiple Choice

How long have you been with the company?

  • Less than 1 year
  • 1-3 years
  • 3-5 years
  • 5-10 years
  • 10+ years
  • Prefer not to say
Q13
Multiple Choice

Which best describes your level?

  • Individual contributor
  • Team lead/Manager
  • Senior manager/Director
  • Executive/VP+
  • Prefer not to say
Q14
Message

That's everything — thank you for your candor. Responses are aggregated and anonymized before they're shared with HR leadership to inform how we review pay and benefits.

What’s included

  • AI follow-ups

    Adaptive probes on open-ended answers that pull out detail a static form would miss.

  • Attention checks

    Built-in safeguards against rushed answers and low-quality respondents.

  • AI-drafted copy

    Wording, ordering, and branching written by the AI — tuned to your research goal.

  • Auto report

    Themes, quotes, and a plain-English summary write themselves once responses come in.

How it compares

We reviewed the closest templates from other survey tools. Here’s what they do well — and where this template goes further.

Why this template

  • Goes beyond a single satisfaction score by pairing an opinion scale with a market-comparison question and a matrix of fairness statements, then uses an AI follow-up interview to probe why perceptions of pay and market value diverge for that specific respondent.
  • Uses MaxDiff and constant-sum (100-point allocation) exercises to force real trade-off prioritization among compensation elements, not just Likert ratings.
  • Captures process fairness (clarity of raise/promotion process) and flight-risk signal (frequency of considering leaving due to pay) alongside pay perception, giving a fuller picture than pay-satisfaction-only templates.
  • Segments results by department, tenure, and level for free, and every AI probe follows a transparent, inspectable prompt rather than a black-box script.

QuestionPro

Salary and Compensation Survey Questions + Sample Questionnaire Template

This page reads more as a guide/sample-questionnaire resource than a ready-to-field template, bundling explanatory content with a list of sample questions. It's useful for question inspiration but likely requires manual assembly into a working survey. QuestionPro's broader platform supports standard survey logic and reporting.

What it does well

  • Provides context and rationale for question choices, useful for teams building a survey from scratch
  • Backed by an established survey platform with broad question-type support

Where it falls short

  • Presented as sample questions/guide content rather than a fielding-ready template, requiring setup work
  • No adaptive AI follow-up to explore individual fairness/satisfaction gaps — static question list only

Typeform

Salary and Compensation Survey Template

A ready-to-use, conversational-style template well suited to Typeform's clean one-question-at-a-time UI. It covers core compensation satisfaction topics but, like most form builders, presents a fixed question set to every respondent. No mention of AI-driven probing or automated scoring of open responses.

What it does well

  • Polished, respondent-friendly interface known for high completion rates
  • Quick to deploy as a ready-made template

Where it falls short

  • Static question flow — cannot adaptively probe a respondent's specific fairness rationale
  • No automated per-response quality scoring or transparent AI prompt methodology

SurveySparrow

Employee Compensation Survey Template | Collect Pay Feedback

A dedicated, fielding-ready template focused on collecting pay feedback, delivered through SurveySparrow's conversational survey format. It appears to cover general compensation feedback but doesn't indicate trade-off exercises like MaxDiff or constant-sum allocation. No adaptive AI interview layer is mentioned.

What it does well

  • Conversational, chat-like survey experience that can feel more approachable than a form
  • Ready-made template purpose-built for compensation feedback

Where it falls short

  • No adaptive AI follow-up to dig into why an employee feels pay is fair or unfair
  • No indication of trade-off methods (e.g., MaxDiff, point allocation) for prioritizing compensation elements

Frequently asked questions

What questions are in the “Employee Salary & Compensation Fairness Survey” template?

The template includes 14 ready-to-use questions, starting with: “Thanks for taking a few minutes to share your honest thoughts on pay and benefits. Your answers are confidential and hel…” · “Overall, how satisfied are you with your total compensation (salary, bonus, and benefits combined)?” · “Compared to similar roles at other companies you're aware of, how does your pay compare?”. The full set is previewed above, and every question is editable.

How long does this survey take to complete?

Respondents typically finish the 14 questions in about 7 minutes.

Can I customize this template?

Yes — every question, answer option, and the ordering is editable before you launch. You can add or remove questions, or ask the AI editor to rework the survey around your research goal.

Is this template free to use?

Yes. Open it in the editor and start customizing right away — no account required to try it, and the free plan covers launching your survey.

Ready to launch?

Open this template in the editor. Every part is yours to change before the first respondent sees it.

Related templates

More studies from the same category.

See all
Employee & HR

Meeting Effectiveness & Culture Pulse Survey

Measures how employees actually experience the meetings on their calendar — frequency, agenda discipline, time well spent, and what they'd fix first — with an AI follow-up that reconstructs a specific meeting that felt like a waste of time and what would have made it worth attending.

View template
Employee & HR

New Manager Onboarding Experience Survey

Measures how well newly promoted or hired managers were prepared to lead people — covering expectations, HR/compliance basics, performance management training, and peer support. An AI follow-up interview digs into the specific gap that left a manager least prepared, so HR can fix the curriculum instead of guessing.

View template
Employee & HR

Workplace Health & Safety Culture Survey

Measures how employees experience hazard awareness, incident reporting, and safety training in practice — not just policy on paper. An AI follow-up interview reconstructs what actually happened the last time someone saw or reported a safety issue, including any fear of retaliation, giving safety teams a real picture behind the scores.

View template
Employee & HR

Employee Workload & Burnout Risk Pulse Survey

Measures how manageable employees find their day-to-day workload, where their time actually goes, and early signs of burnout risk — for HR and people managers running a workload or capacity check-in. An AI follow-up interview digs into the real story behind the busiest or most strained response instead of settling for a number.

View template
Employee & HR

Employee Engagement Pulse for Individual Contributors

Measures day-to-day engagement, recognition, workload, and retention risk among individual contributors (non-managers), separate from manager-level surveys. An AI follow-up interview digs into the concrete reasons behind each person's likelihood-to-recommend score instead of settling for a number.

View template
Employee & HR

Racism in the Workplace: Employee Check-In Survey

Measures how employees experience or witness racism and racial bias at work, how safe they feel raising concerns, and whether leadership follows through on accountability. An AI follow-up interview probes the real story behind low safety ratings or unreported incidents, surfacing details a scale score alone can't capture.

View template