Allyship Self-Assessment Survey

This template measures self-reported allyship behaviors across five areas: active learning, listening and amplifying marginalized voices, responding to bias and exclusion, accepting feedback, and ongoing commitment. It is designed to capture both current habits and the barriers that keep people from acting consistently. The open-ended follow-ups help explain low ratings so you can identify specific engagement drivers for future DEI or ERG programming.

DEI leaders, ERG leads, People teams, and internal communications partners typically run this survey. It works best when the sponsor can act on themes that emerge, such as training gaps, manager effectiveness, or unclear reporting pathways. Because the survey is anonymous by default, it is suitable for broad employee populations as well as targeted groups participating in allyship programming.

This template is usually better as a periodic pulse or program check-in than a weekly survey, because allyship reflection needs enough time for behavior change to be observable. Quarterly or tied-to-program milestones often works well when you want to track progress without creating fatigue. If you are using it after a workshop, ERG campaign, or policy rollout, send it soon enough that the experience is still fresh.

Yes, anonymity should be the default because employees are being asked to reflect on bias, privilege, and moments where they may have caused harm. An anonymity guarantee increases response rate and makes it more likely people will answer honestly about defensiveness, uncertainty, or missed opportunities. If you need demographic cuts, collect them only if necessary and place them last to reduce collection-bias risk.

A common mistake is turning the survey into a values statement instead of a behavior assessment, which makes the results hard to act on. Another is asking only positive questions and skipping follow-ups for low ratings, which hides the reasons behind low confidence or weak practice. Avoid collecting demographics first, using leading wording, or treating allyship as a one-time identity label rather than an ongoing practice.

Yes, and you should. You can adapt the examples in each section to match your culture, employee resource groups, reporting channels, or the kinds of exclusionary behaviors most relevant to your workplace. Keep the core structure intact so you still capture learning, listening, intervention, feedback, and commitment, then tailor the wording to your internal language and policies.

A 5-point Likert scale with clear semantic anchors works well for the behavior items, such as Strongly disagree through Strongly agree. That format is easier to interpret than raw numbers and gives respondents a neutral midpoint when they are unsure. The open-ended follow-ups should appear only when someone rates an item at 3 or lower, so you can learn what is blocking progress.

An ad hoc questionnaire often produces scattered feedback that is hard to compare across teams or over time. This template gives you a consistent structure, which makes it easier to spot patterns in psychological safety, response confidence, and willingness to accept feedback. It also includes an end-of-survey commitment prompt and an open 'Anything else?' question so the survey produces usable next steps, not just opinions.