Pre-Town Hall Topic Crowdsourcing Survey
Collect employee priorities, leadership questions, and format preferences before a town hall so leaders can build a focused agenda and address concerns transparently.
Every employee gets a seat — priced per employee in Communications & Intranet, quoted with this template ready.
Rolled out to every employee at AutoZone (125,000), PetSmart (50,000+), A.S. Watson and Raley's (20,000) — and at larger retailers we are not permitted to name.
Built for: Technology And Saas · Professional Services · Healthcare Organizations · Financial Services · Higher Education
Overview
The Pre-Town Hall Topic Crowdsourcing Survey collects the input leaders need to build an agenda around employee priorities rather than assumptions. Its Topic Priorities section asks which subject deserves the most time, which additional subjects should be included, how important those subjects are, and what employees should understand or be able to do afterward.
The Questions for Leadership section captures questions, urgency, and context so speakers can prepare useful answers instead of reacting to fragmented submissions during the event. Psychological Safety and Format adds a critical participation check: employees can rate whether they feel comfortable raising concerns, explain low scores, choose useful formats, and assess confidence in answer quality and transparency. The final Open Feedback prompt provides space for issues the structured questions miss.
Use this template before an all-hands, executive Q&A, change announcement, or department town hall when you need a crowd-powered agenda and a clear preparation queue. It is not a substitute for an employee engagement survey, a Gallup Q12 measurement, an eNPS survey, or a formal grievance channel. Keep it focused on the upcoming event; use a separate pulse or annual engagement survey to track engagement drivers, manager effectiveness, intent to stay, and broader workplace sentiment over time.
Standards & compliance context
- Configure the survey with an anonymity guarantee that matches the platform’s actual access, retention, and reporting settings, particularly when employees raise sensitive concerns.
- If responses can identify an employee directly or indirectly, provide a clear privacy notice covering purpose, access, retention, and applicable data-protection rights such as those under GDPR.
- Do not use town hall submissions as a substitute for legally required whistleblowing, harassment, safety, accommodation, or grievance reporting channels.
- Limit access to raw comments to the people preparing the agenda and redact unnecessary personal or sensitive details before sharing themes with speakers.
General regulatory context for orientation only — verify current requirements with counsel or the relevant agency before relying on this template for compliance.
What's inside this template
Topic Priorities
This section turns broad employee interests into a ranked agenda and clarifies the outcome employees want from each topic.
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Which topic should receive the most time at the upcoming town hall?
Select one priority topic.
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Which additional topics would you like included in the town hall agenda?
Select all that apply: company strategy and priorities; business performance; customer or market changes; products, services, or innovation; organizational changes; employee experience and engagement; career growth and development; workplace policies or benefits; diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging; tools, systems, or ways of working; other.
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How important is it for leadership to address your selected topics at this town hall?
Use a 5-point scale: 1 = Not at all important, 2 = Slightly important, 3 = Moderately important, 4 = Very important, 5 = Extremely important.
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What would you most like employees to understand or be able to do after the town hall?
Briefly describe the desired outcome, clarification, or decision.
Questions for Leadership
This section gives leaders advance notice of questions and the context needed to prepare specific, useful answers.
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What question would you like leadership to answer during the town hall?
Please focus on a question that would benefit a broad employee audience. Do not include confidential personal information.
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How important is it for leadership to answer your question at this town hall?
Use a 5-point scale: 1 = Not at all important, 2 = Slightly important, 3 = Moderately important, 4 = Very important, 5 = Extremely important.
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What context would help leadership give a useful answer?
Share relevant business context, examples, or the impact of the issue. Please avoid identifying individual employees.
Psychological Safety and Format
This section tests whether employees feel safe participating and identifies the event formats most likely to produce honest, useful engagement.
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I feel comfortable submitting a question or concern for leadership to address in a town hall.
Use a 5-point Likert scale: 1 = Strongly disagree, 2 = Disagree, 3 = Neither agree nor disagree, 4 = Agree, 5 = Strongly agree.
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If you selected 1-3, what would make it safer or easier to raise questions?
Optional follow-up for lower ratings. Examples include anonymous submission, moderated questions, advance responses, or clearer topic boundaries.
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Which formats would make the town hall most useful?
Select all that apply: live leadership Q&A; anonymous pre-submitted questions; moderated panel discussion; employee-voted questions; written answers after the event; breakout discussions; presentation with supporting data; follow-up action summary.
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How confident are you that town hall questions will receive clear and useful answers?
Use a 5-point scale: 1 = Not at all confident, 2 = Slightly confident, 3 = Moderately confident, 4 = Very confident, 5 = Extremely confident.
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If you selected 1-3, what would improve confidence in the quality or transparency of answers?
Optional follow-up for lower ratings.
Open Feedback
This final prompt captures concerns, suggestions, or agenda considerations that the structured questions do not cover.
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Is there anything else you would like leadership to consider when planning this town hall?
Share any additional topic, question, accessibility need, or suggestion. Responses are anonymous.
How to use this template
- Review the four sections and customize topic examples, response options, event details, and format choices for the upcoming town hall while preserving the neutral wording of the rating questions.
- Set the survey to anonymous by default, explain who will review responses and how questions will be selected, and add an optional follow-up route only if employees need to request direct contact.
- Distribute the survey through the channels employees already use and keep it open long enough for relevant time zones, shifts, and remote employees to participate.
- Close the survey before agenda and speaker preparation, then group duplicate questions, rank topic priorities, and attach context from open-text responses to each planned agenda item.
- Share a moderated response plan with leadership that identifies which questions will be answered live, which require written follow-up, and which belong in another confidential process.
- After the town hall, publish answers or action owners for unresolved themes and compare participation, safety, and confidence feedback with the next event rather than treating one event as a complete engagement measure.
Best practices
- Keep the survey to the four sections shown so employees can prioritize the town hall without confusing it with a full engagement questionnaire.
- Use clear semantic anchors such as Strongly disagree to Strongly agree for rating-scale items and avoid unexplained raw numbers.
- Attach an open-text reason to low psychological-safety and confidence ratings so leaders can understand why employees hesitate or distrust answers.
- Preserve anonymity as the default and place any optional demographic or contact questions last to reduce collection-bias and the perception that responses are identifiable.
- Use neutral wording such as which topic should receive the most time rather than leading employees toward a preferred leadership message.
- Group duplicate questions without erasing the concerns behind them, and retain a private log of unanswered items for post-event follow-up.
- Explain the selection and moderation process before the survey closes so employees know whether questions may be edited, combined, deferred, or answered privately.
- Treat this as event input rather than a recurring engagement score, and use a separate pulse cadence when you need to monitor sentiment over time.
What this template typically catches
Issues teams running this template most often surface in practice:
Common use cases
Frequently asked questions
What does this pre-town hall survey measure?
It collects the topics employees want prioritized, questions they want leadership to answer, and context that can make answers useful. It also measures psychological safety, confidence in answer quality, and preferred town hall formats. The final open-feedback question captures concerns that do not fit the structured prompts.
When should we send this survey?
Send it early enough for leadership to review themes, group duplicate questions, and prepare answers before the town hall. The right lead time depends on your planning cycle and event cadence. Close responses before agenda materials are finalized so the results can directly shape the program.
Who should run and review the survey?
An internal communications, people operations, or event owner can configure and distribute it. A small review group should summarize topic priorities and questions while removing duplicates and protecting anonymity. Leaders should receive themes and representative questions rather than exposing individual responses unnecessarily.
Should responses be anonymous?
Anonymity should be the default for this employee survey, especially because it asks about psychological safety and concerns for leadership. If follow-up is needed, offer an optional contact field outside the core response or explain exactly who can see it. Handle any personal data according to your privacy policy and applicable GDPR or other data-protection requirements.
Can this template be customized for a virtual or hybrid town hall?
Yes. Keep the topic and question sections, then tailor the format choices to your event, such as live Q&A, moderated chat, anonymous submissions, breakout discussions, or recorded responses. You can also add questions about time zones, accessibility, interpretation, or recording preferences without placing demographic questions before the content.
How is this better than collecting questions ad hoc?
A structured survey separates topic priorities from individual questions and shows which issues employees consider most important. It also identifies whether people feel safe raising concerns and whether they trust the quality of answers. An ad hoc chat or inbox often overrepresents fast responders and makes it harder to compare, group, and prioritize submissions.
How should we act on low psychological-safety or confidence scores?
Review the written reasons attached to ratings of 1–3 and look for barriers such as fear of attribution, unclear moderation, lack of follow-up, or past vague answers. Explain how questions will be selected and whether submissions can be anonymous. Share what will be answered live, deferred, or handled through another channel so expectations remain clear.
Can the results integrate with our town hall workflow?
Export or connect responses to the planning system your team uses for agenda items, speaker preparation, and follow-up actions. Group duplicate questions into themes, preserve the original wording where useful, and tag each item by owner or answer status. Do not transfer identifiable comments more broadly than necessary.
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Every employee gets a seat. Request pricing for Communications & Intranet and we quote into a workspace with Pre-Town Hall Topic Crowdsourcing Survey ready.
Rolled out to every employee at AutoZone (125,000), PetSmart (50,000+), A.S. Watson and Raley's (20,000) — and at larger retailers we are not permitted to name.
