A single word can change everything in employee surveys. "Will" versus "was." "Intend" versus "thought about." These minor linguistic choices can swing favorability scores by 10 points or more and completely alter your understanding of employee sentiment.
After analyzing three years of benchmark data across industries, we want to look at some patterns that should influence how you think about survey design.
Language shapes thought, and thought shapes response. When you ask "Management will use survey results to make improvements," you're inviting optimism and possibility. When you ask "Improvements were made as a result of the last survey," you're demanding evidence and memory.
The difference isn't trivial. In our benchmark data:
That's a 13-point gap for essentially the same question, just pointed in different temporal directions.
But it goes deeper than scores. Each tense captures different psychological territory. Present tense grounds employees in current reality. Past tense requires memory and evaluation of changes over time. Future tense taps into hope, expectation, and trust. Choose wrong, and you're measuring different constructs entirely.
We analyzed 508 items in our employee opinion survey library. The breakdown is telling:
Present tense dominates because it does what employee surveys need most: capture the current employee experience accurately, without the distortion of memory or speculation.
But when organizations do venture into past or future tense, the results reveal valuable insights about how employees process temporal questions.
Here's where it gets really interesting. When we ask "Improvements were made as a result of the last survey," employees with less than one year tenure show a dramatically different response pattern:
Overall population:
Employees with <1 year tenure:
Half of your new hires are selecting "neutral" on past-tense questions. They literally can't answer because they weren't there! Yet their responses could still end counting in your overall metrics, artificially deflating scores and obscuring real sentiment.
The same pattern appears when asking if "My manager has taken action based on the results of our last survey." New hires show 38% neutral responses compared to 28.8% overall. They're being asked to evaluate events they didn't experience.
The lesson here? If you must use past-tense items, segment your analysis by tenure or risk misreading your data.
Flip the temporal arrow forward, and the pattern reverses. Employees with less than one year tenure consistently score future-tense items higher than their longer-tenured colleagues.
"I believe management will use the survey results to make improvements":
"I intend to stay with this company for at least the next 12 months":
New employees haven't yet experienced the gap between promise and delivery. They haven't watched multiple survey cycles come and go without visible change. Their optimism about the future hasn't been diminished by harsh organizational realities, such as being deprived of career development and progression opportunities even as outside hires are brought for better positions at higher rates of pay.
This isn't necessarily bad, as it might reflect genuine opportunity for change for all involved. But it does mean future-tense items can mask brewing discontent among longer-tenured employees who've seen this Marvel movie before (and already disliked the previous five sequels).
If there's one place where precise language matters most, it's retention. The way you ask about staying or leaving can completely change both response patterns and predictive validity.
Compare these three approaches:
Specific and time-bound: "I intend to stay with this company for at least the next 12 months"
Hypothetical comparison: "I would stay at the company even if offered a similar job elsewhere"
Vague frequency: "I rarely think about leaving this company for another"
The specific, time-bound version wins on every metric. It generates clearer responses (fewer neutrals), higher favorability, and according to our predictive validity research, better correlation with actual turnover.
Why? Because "intend to stay for 12 months" is a concrete commitment employees can evaluate. "Rarely think about leaving" could mean anything. Everyone has bad days where they fantasize about quitting. The precision of the question drives precision in the response.
If you use past-tense questions, quality communication becomes paramount. You can’t ask new hires about “improvements from the last survey” without first explaining what those improvements were. Otherwise, you’re guaranteed high neutral responses that muddy your data.
Organizations seeing success with past-tense items tend to:
There’s value in both past- and future-tense questions, but each serves a different purpose. Past-tense items are best suited for assessing actions already taken or long-running programs. They work well for organizations with established listening practices and clear communication channels.
Future-tense items, by contrast, make more sense when an organization is building or rebuilding trust. They allow employees to express expectations and optimism about what’s to come. But these items create accountability: when employees say they believe “feedback will be used,” that belief becomes a promise to fulfill. High scores on future-tense items without visible follow-through can erode credibility faster than low scores ever could.
Ultimately, the mix of question tenses should reflect your organization’s maturity, history, and goals. Past-tense items help you measure impact. Future-tense items test confidence in what comes next. Align each question’s intent with where your organization (and your employees) actually are.
Major changes — reorganizations, mergers, leadership transitions — complicate temporal questions significantly. Employees might view the past with nostalgia if unhappy with changes, or with criticism if optimistic about a new direction.
During such periods, consider:
The goal isn't to game the scores by choosing tense strategically, but to ensure you're measuring what you intend to measure.
Based on our analysis, here are evidence-based guidelines for using tense in your surveys:
Default to present tense (90% of items). It provides the clearest snapshot of current employee experience without temporal complications.
Use past tense sparingly and strategically. When you do, ensure all respondents have context to answer meaningfully. Consider tenure-based skip logic.
Deploy future tense for trust and confidence measures. But remember you're measuring optimism, not reality. Track whether that optimism is justified through follow-up.
For retention, be specific and time-bound. "Intend to stay for X months" beats vague constructions every time.
Segment analysis by tenure when using non-present tense to understand how organizational history affects responses.
Don't tense-shift to boost scores. If past-tense items score lower, that's valuable information about unmet expectations, not a reason to switch to future tense.
The words we choose shape the data we receive. While present tense should dominate your survey design, strategic use of past and future tense can reveal important dynamics…if you’re willing to take the time to understand their limitations and account for their biases.
Remember: you're not trying to engineer positive scores through linguistic tricks. You're trying to capture accurate employee sentiment that drives meaningful action. Sometimes that means accepting lower scores on past-tense items because they reflect real disappointment. Sometimes it means tempering optimism from future-tense items with realistic planning.
Ready to optimize your survey design for maximum insight and accuracy? Schedule a demo to see how our People Insights Platform and validated survey library help you ask the right questions the right way. Explore our People Insights Model to understand the science behind effective survey design. For ongoing insights on survey methodology and employee experience solutions, subscribe to our blog and read our FAQ.