100 Essential get-to-know-you questions to build thriving healthcare and nonprofit teams

In fast-paced, high-pressure environments like healthcare and nonprofit organizations, team members thrive when they feel connected and supported by a positive work environment. A simple employee questionnaire for “getting to know you” is a powerful way to start building those connections.

Why asking the right get-to-know-you questions matters

Asking intentional get-to-know-you questions lets your organization move beyond surface-level interaction and accomplish several goals:

• Increase job satisfaction: When veteran and new employees feel seen and heard, employee morale naturally rises, boosting employee engagement and forming a foundation for a productive work environment. 
• Improve team dynamics: Understanding each team member’s strengths and hidden talents as well as how different roles contribute to success leads to better communication, fewer misunderstandings, and a stronger organizational culture.
• Accelerate the onboarding process: For new hires, an onboarding survey or employee questionnaire helps them get to know the team and the company’s values faster.

100 questions to build a culture of connection

Use this curated set of 100 essential questions to help your team build trust, improve employee engagement, and foster a thriving company culture.

Part 1: Building foundational trust and rapport

These fun icebreaker questions help establish rapport and common ground:

1. What was your first job?
2. What is your go-to morning beverage?
3. Are you a morning person, an early bird, or a night owl?
4. What’s your favorite food or ice cream flavor?
5. What’s the weirdest food you’ve ever eaten?
6. Do you have any unique family traditions?
7. In one word, how would your best friend describe you?
8. If you could only use one-word answers for a day, what would your one word be?
9. If you had a time machine, what moment would you visit?
10. Which historical figure would you invite to your dream dinner party?
11. If you could swap lives with a fictional character, who would you choose?
12. If you could wake up inside a fictional world, which one would it be?
13. What’s your go-to karaoke song?
14. What is the most interesting place you’ve traveled to?
15. What are your hidden talents? 
16. What’s your favorite board game or video game?
17. Do you prefer reading a book or watching a movie?
18. What’s your favorite movie or TV show?
19. What’s one thing you’re passionate about outside of work?
20. What is your favorite season?
21. What is your favorite holiday?
22. What musical instruments can you play?
23. What’s the most adventurous thing you’ve ever done?
24. Are you a cat person or a dog person?
25. What’s one thing that always makes you laugh?
26. If you could bring only three things to a deserted island, what would they be?
27. What does your ideal weekend look like: lazy, adventurous, or a bit of both?
28. What’s a fun fact about your hometown?
29. What is your dream house like?
30. What’s one thing you’re learning right now?

Part 2: Understanding individual motivations and work styles

These questions are designed to be asked in one-on-one settings or smaller groups. They help you understand what drives each team member on a personal level, leading to better support, motivation, and job satisfaction.

31. What is a specific personal goal you are currently working toward?
32. How do you define personal success?
33. What is your biggest professional goal for the next year?
34. What is one valuable lesson you’ve learned in your career path so far?
35. What’s one professional skill you’d like to develop?
36. What resources could help you master that professional skill?
37. What part of your role contributes most to your job satisfaction?
38. What makes you feel most valued in the work environment?
39. What one word describes how you want to feel at work?
40. On the flip side, what is one thing that reduces your job satisfaction?
41. What makes you feel ready to tackle a tough day?
42. How would you rate your current employee satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10?
43. What’s your go-to strategy to boost productivity?
44. How do you like to prioritize tasks when faced with multiple deadlines?
45. What is your biggest distraction when you need to focus?
46. What’s one thing you do to prioritize your work-life balance?
47. How do you prefer to receive feedback from your manager and team members?
48. Thinking about your long-term career path, where do you see yourself in five years?
49. What was the most challenging project you’ve worked on in your career, and what did you learn from it?
50. How do you best learn something new: by reading, watching a tutorial, or jumping right in?
51. How can your team leader best support your professional goals?
52. What kind of recognition or appreciation is most meaningful to you?
53. What is one aspect of our mission that personally inspires your employee engagement?
54. When you face a setback, what’s your personal strategy for staying motivated?
55. If you could change one thing about your daily routine to improve your job satisfaction, what would it be?
56. What kind of work environment helps you do your best work: collaborative and bustling, or quiet and focused?
57. What is one of your hidden talents or a skill you possess that others on the team might not know about?
58. How do you prefer to start a conversation when you need help or want to share an idea, fostering open communication?
59. What makes you feel truly connected to your team members on a personal level?
60. What does an ideal or perfect workday look like for you, from start to finish?
61. What is a nonwork-related topic you’re passionate about learning more about right now?

Part 3: Strengthening team dynamics and company culture

These questions are perfect for team meetings, annual team-building sessions, or anonymous surveys. They focus on the collective experience: how the team works together and how everyone perceives the broader company environment.

62. How do you define a good working relationship?
63. What are your feelings about the current level of collaboration on the team?
64. What’s a team member’s strength you admire and want to learn from?
65. How do you typically handle disagreements within the team?
66. What does success look like for our team this quarter?
67. What is a recent challenging project where the team truly excelled?
68. What is the biggest barrier to open communication in the team?
69. What is one thing we could do to make our team meetings more efficient?
70. What makes you feel most prepared for a team meeting?
71. What’s one thing that could increase your engagement in meetings?
72. What is the biggest barrier to getting things done after a meeting?
73. How can we ensure open communication continues outside of formal settings?
74. What’s one way the team could be increasing its efficiency?
75. How can the team better use the skills of new employees?
76. What are the biggest challenges you see in our current business processes?
77. What support do you need most from your team leader right now?
78. What’s one way the team leader can better support employees during busy periods?
79. What’s one thing you wish your team leader would ask more often?
80. What’s one thing you appreciate about our company culture?
81. What part of our company’s values resonates most with you?
82. What are the unspoken rules of our workplace culture?
83. What one word describes the general vibe of our team right now?
84. What’s one suggestion for our next team-building activity?
85. What are your feelings about the company’s handling of a recent change?

Part 4: Strengthening client and patient relationships

For healthcare and nonprofit teams, understanding how employees connect their roles to the mission is key to high job satisfaction. These questions drive alignment toward better patient outcomes and customer satisfaction.

86. What is the most rewarding experience you’ve had with a patient or client?
87. How does your specific role contribute to the success of our clients?
88. What is one thing that clients consistently praise our organization for?
89. What’s one area where we truly excel compared to our competitors?
90. What is one area of our service delivery that you think needs attention?
91. What is the most challenging type of interaction you face daily?
92. What’s the biggest challenge in meeting customer satisfaction goals?
93. What’s one thing that would make it easier to deliver excellent customer satisfaction?
94. What resources could better support our team members who directly interact with patients/clients?
95. How do we best live up to our company’s values in a patient or client interaction?
96. What could be improved in our current new employee onboarding process?
97. What part of our mission drives employee engagement the most?
98. What does excellent teamwork look like when delivering a service?
99. What’s a great example of a working relationship that benefited a client?
100. How can we better translate employee sentiment into improved client services?

From an employee questionnaire to a culture of connection

While asking the right questions is a great start to understanding your employees, gathering data is only the first step. To create lasting organizational change, you need to translate that feedback into a tangible strategy.Corporate Transcendence is here to help you do just that. Using your data, we tailor our executive-level coaching, leadership training, and consultation services to:

• Empower company leaders: We equip your team leaders and managers with the skills to use employee feedback to foster team bonding and cultivate strong working relationships.
• Improve workplace culture: We use a structured approach to integrate this feedback into your company culture, turning good intentions into daily practices that drive high employee satisfaction.
• Ensure sustainable success: We provide tools for managing change effectively, helping your organization achieve long-term growth and improve the onboarding process for all future new employees. We help you get to know your team to boost productivity and improve your entire work environment.

Ready to move from a simple employee questionnaire to a completely transformed, high-performing organization? Reach out to us today to get started.