Employee engagement in India fell to 23% in 2025, its lowest level in four years, according to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 report. The decline is not just a morale problem. Gallup estimates that disengagement costs the Indian economy close to 351 billion dollars annually in lost productivity, roughly 9% of the country’s GDP.
Most organisations already run engagement surveys. The gap is usually in what they ask. A survey with the wrong questions yields a score without a diagnosis, leaving HR teams unable to act on the results.
Why The Right Questions Matter More Than The Right Tool
An employee engagement survey is only as useful as the questions it asks. Gallup’s Q12 research, based on decades of testing across more than 3.3 million employees, found that business units in the top quartile of engagement outperform bottom-quartile units by 23% in profitability and see 78% lower absenteeism.
Indian HR teams face an added layer of urgency. ADP Research’s People at Work 2025 report found that engagement in India dropped to 19% in 2025, down from 24% the previous year, the steepest regional decline the study tracked. A generic survey will not surface that kind of gap. Specific, well-tested questions will.
1. I Know What Is Expected Of Me At Work
This is the first item in Gallup’s Q12 framework, and it measures role clarity, which sits at the base of Gallup’s engagement hierarchy. Employees who are unclear on what success looks like in their role cannot be engaged in pursuing it. Ask this on a five-point agreement scale (Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree) rather than yes/no, since agreement scales capture the “not engaged” middle group that a binary question misses.
2. I Have The Tools And Resources I Need To Do My Job Well
Also part of the Q12, this question flags operational friction before it shows up as attrition. When employees lack the right systems, access, or equipment, they spend time building workarounds instead of doing the work itself. For hybrid teams in India, where IT services firms like TCS and Infosys have tightened return-to-office norms partly around collaboration gaps, this question often reveals whether remote setups are actually functional or just tolerated.
3. In The Last Seven Days, I Have Received Recognition Or Praise For Good Work
Recognition has one of the tightest feedback loops of any engagement driver, which is why Gallup frames it around a seven-day window rather than a vague “regularly.” A long recall period produces unreliable answers because people forget. A tight one forces a specific, honest response.
| Question Framing | Recall Accuracy | Best Use |
| “Do you feel recognised at work?” | Low | Avoid |
| “In the last 7 days…” | High | Q12-style pulse and annual surveys |
| “In the last 6 months…” | Moderate | Growth and development items |
4. My Manager (Or Someone At Work) Cares About Me As A Person
Gallup’s research attributes at least 70% of the variance in team engagement to the manager. This question is not about friendliness. It measures psychological safety, and low scores here typically point to specific managers or teams rather than a company-wide culture problem, which makes it one of the more actionable items on any survey.
5. I Have Opportunities To Learn And Grow
This connects engagement to retention risk. The link works both ways. Moderate, well-supported development opportunities improve engagement, but development demands that outpace an employee’s capacity can backfire. STL Digital CHRO Aritra Sarkar, in an interview with ThePeoplesBoard, noted that employees overwhelmed by mandated training are close to three times more likely to burn out and twice as likely to be job hunting. The question needs a follow-up that asks whether current learning demands feel manageable, not just whether opportunities exist.
6. The Mission or Purpose of My Company Makes Me Feel My Job is Important
This item measures line-of-sight between daily tasks and organisational goals. It matters most for functions where the connection to outcomes is not obvious, such as back-office and support roles. Purpose-driven companies tend to report stronger workforce and customer satisfaction outcomes, according to Deloitte research, which makes this question relevant beyond morale alone. It also ties into how organisations think about workplace culture, since purpose and belonging are closely linked in engagement research.
7. How Likely Are You To Recommend This Company As A Place To Work? (0 to 10)
This is the core eNPS question, adapted from Bain & Company’s Net Promoter methodology, and it should always be scored on the standard 0 to 10 scale to allow benchmarking. Responses split into three groups:
- Promoters (9 to 10): Actively advocate for the company
- Passives (7 to 8): Satisfied but not enthusiastic, and vulnerable to competing offers
- Detractors (0 to 6): Unhappy, and a retention risk
eNPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters. HR teams often focus energy on Detractors, but converting Passives into Promoters typically yields the larger gain, since this group is closer to advocacy already and often needs smaller interventions to shift. This question should never stand alone. Pair it with a follow-up (see question 8) or the score becomes a number without context.
8. What Is The Primary Reason For Your Score?
This open-ended follow-up to eNPS, or to any rating question, is where the qualitative signal lives. A numeric score tells HR teams the size of a problem. This question tells them what the problem actually is. Following the 70:20:10 structuring principle used in well-designed pulse surveys, roughly 10% of total survey questions should be open-ended text responses, concentrated on the items HR most needs to understand rather than spread evenly across the survey.
How To Sequence These Eight Questions
Order affects response quality. Gallup’s own research notes that Q12 item wording and sequencing were tested extensively because poor ordering skews results. A practical structure:
- Start with role clarity and resources (questions 1 and 2)
- Move to recognition and manager relationship (questions 3 and 4)
- Cover growth and purpose (questions 5 and 6)
- Close with the overall loyalty measure and open-ended follow-up (questions 7 and 8)
This shifts from concrete, easy-to-answer items to more reflective ones, which helps maintain higher completion rates through the end of the survey.
Annual Survey vs. Pulse Survey: Where These Questions Fit
Not every question belongs in every survey cycle. Annual engagement surveys work well for the full set of eight, since they are meant to be comprehensive. Pulse surveys, run monthly or quarterly, work better with a smaller rotating subset, typically 5 to 10 questions, to avoid survey fatigue.
| Survey Type | Frequency | Question Count | Best Questions From This List |
| Annual Engagement Survey | Once or twice a year | 40 to 50 | All 8, plus supplementary items |
| Quarterly Pulse Survey | Every 3 months | 5 to 15 | 3, 4, 7, 8 |
| Monthly Pulse Check | Monthly | 5 to 10 | 3, 7, 8 |
Anonymous surveys consistently see higher participation. Research on pulse survey design shows anonymous formats achieving response rates in the 56 to 63% range, compared to lower participation when identities are attached to responses. For Indian workplaces where hierarchy can discourage candid upward feedback, anonymity is not optional if the goal is honest data.
Common Mistakes To Avoid
- Asking too many questions in one cycle. Anything beyond 15 to 20 minutes of completion time increases drop-off and rushed answers.
- Skipping the follow-up on eNPS. A score without a reason is a number HR cannot act on.
- Reusing the same open-ended prompt every cycle. Rotate the specific ask (recognition this quarter, workload next quarter) to avoid repetitive, low-effort responses.
- Not closing the loop. Employees who see no visible action after a survey become less likely to respond honestly the next time, which quietly erodes data quality over successive cycles.
- Treating hybrid and on-site employees identically. ADP’s 2025 data found on-site employees in India reporting higher engagement than hybrid counterparts, so segmenting results by work mode often reveals patterns a blended score would hide.
In The End…
Engagement surveys fail for one of two reasons: the wrong questions or no follow-through on the answers. The eight questions above, rooted in Gallup’s Q12 and the eNPS framework, are built to surface specific, fixable issues rather than a single abstract score. The next step is not adding more questions. It’s making sure every one of these produces an action plan, an owner, and a timeline that employees can actually see play out.
