Work-life balance is not a perk. It is a signal. When employees say they cannot disconnect, feel overwhelmed by workload, or skip time off to meet expectations, they are telling you the organization tolerates unsustainable norms. A WHO/ILO study links long working hours to increased stroke and heart-disease deaths, showing that burnout risk is measurable and preventable. This survey helps you spot early warning signs and take action before turnover, absenteeism, or health crises force your hand.

Work Life Balance: Survey questions

The following items measure whether workload, flexibility, and personal time feel sustainable. Use a 5-point scale (1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agree) for closed questions, a 0–10 scale for the overall recommendation, and open text for qualitative insights.

Workload sustainability

Flexibility & control

Boundary respect

Personal time quality

Manager support

Company norms & culture

Stress & burnout signals

Overall recommendation

Open-ended questions

Decision table: scores, thresholds & actions

Use this table to convert survey results into clear, accountable next steps. Each row represents a common pattern seen in employee engagement and wellbeing data.

Key takeaways

Definition & scope

This survey measures perceived work-life balance across workload sustainability, flexibility, boundary respect, and burnout risk. It is intended for all employees and supports decisions on staffing, policy changes, and manager coaching. The survey helps HR and leadership distinguish between individuals facing temporary pressure and systemic issues that require organizational intervention.

Scoring & thresholds

Each closed item uses a 1–5 scale (Strongly disagree to Strongly agree). Calculate the average score for each question area (workload, flexibility, boundaries, personal time, manager support, culture, burnout signals). Scores below 3.0 indicate critical concern; 3.0–3.9 suggests improvement needed; 4.0 or higher reflects strength. The overall recommendation uses a 0–10 scale; scores ≤6 signal dissatisfaction that warrants immediate escalation.

For example, if the flexibility section averages 2.7, workload averages 2.9, and burnout signals average 2.5, the team is at high risk. These thresholds guide which areas demand urgent intervention and which can follow standard development cycles. Use consistent scoring rules across teams to enable fair comparison and prioritize resources where the need is greatest.

Follow-up & responsibilities

Every low score requires a named owner, a clear action, and a deadline. When workload sustainability falls below 3.0, the manager and HR partner conduct a workload audit within 14 days, reviewing task lists, overtime logs, and deadlines to identify bottlenecks. If flexibility scores are low, HR and the team lead pilot adjusted scheduling options within 21 days. Boundary-respect issues trigger manager training on after-hours norms within 14 days. Personal-time concerns prompt HR to review PTO usage patterns and identify employees who skip days. Manager-support gaps require coaching from a senior manager or HR business partner within 7 days. Culture and norm issues need a leadership town hall within 30 days. Stress and burnout signals demand immediate 1:1 conversations and access to Employee Assistance Programs within 7 days. Assign all actions during a calibration meeting with HR, managers, and leadership representatives present.

Track completion in a shared dashboard. Send reminders at the halfway point. Report outcomes in the next survey cycle to close the feedback loop and demonstrate that input drives change.

Fairness & bias checks

Analyze results by department, tenure, remote versus on-site status, and manager to spot patterns that signal inequity. For instance, one team may score well on boundary respect while another in the same function scores poorly, pointing to manager-level differences rather than company-wide policy gaps. Remote workers may report higher flexibility but lower connection to colleagues. Frontline staff may experience less schedule control than office teams. Women and caregivers sometimes report higher workload pressure and less flexibility.

Break down open comments by demographic group to catch themes that quantitative scores might obscure. If certain groups consistently flag after-hours expectations or lack of manager support, tailor interventions to those cohorts. Use anonymized aggregates (minimum group size of 5) to protect confidentiality. Regular fairness reviews ensure the survey surfaces systemic issues rather than averaging them away.

Examples & use cases

Engineering team with unsustainable workload

An engineering department scores 2.6 on workload sustainability. Open comments mention constant firefighting, unclear priorities, and repeated weekend deployments. HR and the engineering manager conduct a workload audit, discovering that two critical systems lack redundancy and a single engineer holds all tribal knowledge. Within 14 days, the manager redistributes on-call rotations, documents key processes, and opens a backfill requisition. A follow-up pulse three months later shows workload scores rising to 3.8 and voluntary turnover dropping from 18 percent to 9 percent annualized.

Sales team with boundary-respect issues

A sales team scores 2.8 on boundary respect. Employees report late-night Slack messages, weekend forecast calls, and pressure to respond immediately. The manager assumes urgency is normal in sales. HR shares the survey data and coaches the manager to set explicit response-time norms: no expectation of replies after 7 PM or on weekends unless a deal is closing that day. The manager models the behavior by delaying send times and acknowledging team members who protect their off-hours. Boundary-respect scores climb to 4.1 in the next survey, and the team's engagement score rises 12 points.

Customer-success team with burnout signals

A customer-success team scores 2.4 on stress and burnout. Several employees mention feeling emotionally exhausted and thinking about leaving. HR offers immediate 1:1s with affected staff, promotes the EAP, and works with the manager to identify workload drivers. They discover that a recent product launch doubled ticket volume without adding headcount. Leadership approves two additional hires and assigns a senior CS representative to triage tickets. Burnout scores improve to 3.6 within six months, and voluntary attrition falls below company average.

Implementation & updates

Start with a pilot in one high-risk department to refine question wording and test the decision table. Collect feedback from pilot participants on survey length, clarity, and whether they feel safe answering honestly. Adjust thresholds and actions based on pilot learnings. Roll out organization-wide once the process is stable. Train managers to interpret results and lead post-survey conversations with their teams. Publish aggregate findings and action plans within two weeks of survey close to build trust and accountability.

Run the full survey annually. Use quarterly pulse checks with 5–7 questions to track progress on action items and catch emerging issues early. Update questions as work practices evolve—for example, add items on asynchronous communication or hybrid scheduling if those become central to your operating model. Review open comments each cycle to identify new themes that merit dedicated questions. Archive historical data to measure long-term trends and demonstrate ROI from interventions.

Key metrics to track

Share metrics with leadership quarterly. Celebrate teams that improve scores and highlight interventions that work. Use poor metrics to justify budget requests for additional headcount, training, or policy changes. A talent platform like Sprad Growth can help automate survey sends, reminders, and follow-up tasks, making it easier to maintain regular cadence and track longitudinal trends.

Conclusion

This survey transforms abstract concerns about work-life balance into specific, observable behaviors and measurable risk. By asking employees whether their workload feels sustainable, whether they can disconnect, and whether their manager supports balance, you surface warning signs before burnout drives turnover or health crises. The decision table turns scores into actions with clear owners and deadlines, ensuring feedback leads to change rather than sitting in a report. Fairness checks prevent averaging away the experiences of high-risk groups, and pilot rollouts let you refine questions and thresholds before scaling organization-wide.

The real value lies in closing the loop. Publish results quickly, assign accountable owners, and track completion. Employees will trust future surveys only if they see this one drive real improvements. Use pulse checks to monitor progress between annual cycles, and update questions as work practices evolve. Over time, consistent measurement and action build a culture where balance is not a perk but an operational discipline that protects performance, engagement, and retention.

Start by selecting one department for a pilot, customize the decision table to match your organization's roles and timelines, and ensure leadership commits to acting on the results. Once the pilot proves the process works, expand survey cadence and integrate findings into workforce planning, manager coaching, and strategic decisions about staffing and policy. The survey becomes a repeatable system for keeping work sustainable, not a one-time diagnostic exercise.

FAQ

How often should we run this survey?

Conduct the full work-life balance survey annually to capture comprehensive trends and allow time for interventions to take effect. Supplement with quarterly pulse checks (5–7 questions) to track progress on action items and catch emerging issues early. Pulse surveys can focus on one area—such as workload or boundaries—based on the annual results. If you implement major changes like a new flexibility policy or headcount additions, run a targeted pulse within 60–90 days to measure impact.

What should we do if scores are very low across the board?

Scores below 3.0 across multiple areas signal systemic issues that require senior leadership involvement. Convene a cross-functional task force with HR, operations, and a C-level sponsor to review workload data, staffing levels, and cultural norms. Prioritize the area with the lowest score or the highest business risk—such as burnout in a revenue-critical team. Launch immediate interventions with visible executive support, such as hiring freezes lifted, manager training scheduled, or after-hours communication policies announced. Communicate transparently with employees about what you found and what you will do, then measure progress in the next pulse.

How do we handle critical comments or identify at-risk individuals?

Open comments often reveal urgency that numeric scores miss. Assign HR or a wellbeing lead to review all comments for keywords like "burnout," "quit," "exhausted," or descriptions of unmanageable workload. For anonymous surveys, you cannot identify individuals, but you can contact teams or managers where patterns appear and ask them to check in with their direct reports. If the survey is not anonymous, reach out to high-risk respondents within 48 hours to offer support, EAP resources, or a conversation about workload adjustments. Always respect confidentiality and avoid punitive actions that would discourage honest feedback in future cycles.

How do we engage managers and avoid defensiveness?

Share results in a way that frames them as opportunities for improvement, not performance evaluations. Provide managers with their team's scores alongside company benchmarks and a clear decision table that prescribes next steps. Offer training on interpreting survey data, facilitating team discussions, and implementing action plans. Recognize managers whose teams improve scores cycle over cycle. Pair struggling managers with HR coaches or senior leaders who model effective balance practices. Make it clear that low scores reflect systemic issues—workload, policies, norms—not individual failure, and that the goal is to support managers in creating sustainable conditions for their teams.

How do we keep the survey relevant as work practices evolve?

Review question wording and decision-table thresholds annually. Analyze open comments for recurring themes that current questions do not capture—such as issues with hybrid scheduling, asynchronous communication expectations, or caregiving responsibilities. Add or revise 1–2 items per cycle based on these insights and pilot changes with a small group before rolling out organization-wide. Track whether new questions correlate with turnover, engagement, or performance metrics to validate their predictive value. Archive deprecated questions and document why you changed them so future teams understand the survey's evolution. As your organization adopts new tools or policies, update examples in manager training and adjust follow-up actions to match current workflows.