40 town hall meeting questions to ask employees (anonymous)

A good town hall question is specific, anonymous, and answerable in one tap. The goal isn’t to fill airtime — it’s to learn something you’d otherwise only hear in the hallway. Open with a quick pulse, ask about the things people actually talk about (strategy, trust, workload), and always leave an open box for what you forgot to ask.

Anonymity matters more here than anywhere. In front of the whole company, people answer the safe way — anonymity is the trust contract that gets you the real answer. Run these as anonymous polls people join from a phone.

Opening pulse questions

One tap to set the tone and get a baseline read of the room.

1. In one word, how are you feeling about work this month?
2. How’s your workload right now — light, manageable, heavy, or underwater?
3. How connected do you feel to what the company’s trying to do? (1–5)
4. How’s your energy heading into this quarter?
5. What’s one word for the last 90 days?

Strategy & direction questions

Find out whether the plan is actually landing — not just whether it was announced.

1. How clear are this quarter’s priorities to you? (1–5)
2. Could you explain our top goal to a friend outside the company?
3. Where do you think our biggest risk is right now?
4. What’s one thing we should stop doing?
5. How confident are you that we’ll hit our goals this quarter? (1–5)
6. What decision would you like more visibility into?
7. If you ran the company for a day, what’s the first thing you’d change?

Trust & psychological-safety questions

The ones people will only answer when their name isn’t attached.

1. How safe do you feel raising a concern with leadership? (1–5)
2. Do you feel heard when you give feedback? (yes / sometimes / no)
3. What’s something you wish leadership talked about more openly?
4. What’s one thing you’d change if there were no consequences?
5. How much do you trust the information you get from leadership? (1–5)
6. Is there a question you’ve been wanting to ask but haven’t?

Culture & wellbeing questions

1. Would you recommend this company as a place to work? (0–10)
2. Do you have what you need to do your best work? (yes / mostly / no)
3. How sustainable is your current pace? (1–5)
4. What’s one thing that would make your day-to-day better?
5. How well do we live our stated values? (1–5)
6. What’s draining your energy at work right now?
7. Do you feel like your growth is supported here? (1–5)

Recognition & team questions

1. Who deserves a shout-out this month? (open text)
2. What’s a win we didn’t celebrate enough?
3. What’s one thing another team did that made your work easier?
4. What’s a small fix that would save you time every week?
5. Where are we duplicating effort across teams?

Closing questions

1. What’s your single biggest open question right now?
2. How useful was this all-hands? (1–5)
3. What should we cover next time?
4. What did we not talk about that we should have?
5. One word: how do you feel about where we’re headed?
6. Anything you wanted to say but didn’t? (anonymous, open text)

Plus a few format-flexible ones to swap in:

36. What rumor would you like leadership to confirm or kill?
37. What’s one process that feels broken?
38. If we could fix one thing before next quarter, what should it be?
39. How well did we follow through on what we said last all-hands? (1–5)
40. What’s one question you think your teammates are afraid to ask?

How to actually use these

• Pick 3–5, not 40. A town hall poll is a temperature check, not a survey. Rotate the set each session.
• Default to anonymous. Then react well to the hard answer — that’s what earns honesty next time.
• Show the results live and close the loop next session (“you said X, here’s what changed”).
• Make joining frictionless — a phone and a QR code, no app, no login. See live polls for team meetings.