Occupational Health and Safety Survey Template: Ready-to-Use Questions and Rollout Steps

An occupational health and safety survey template is a set of questions an organisation gives its employees to understand how they perceive safety at work: how well they know the procedures, whether training and protective equipment are adequate, how clear it is to report hazards, and how seriously leadership takes safety. This article gives you a complete template you can copy, with steps for running it in Saudi workplaces and turning the results into an improvement plan.

This is general guidance, not legal or medical advice. A survey does not replace a risk assessment carried out by qualified professionals, nor the regulatory requirements that apply to you.

Why your organisation needs a workplace safety survey

Many organisations track safety through incident logs and inspection walks. Both matter, but they show what has already happened or what is visible on the day of the walk. A survey reveals what employees know but rarely reaches management, such as:

• Procedures that teams skip when workload peaks.
• Missing or uncomfortable equipment that people avoid wearing.
• Near misses that went unreported for fear of blame.
• Differences in safety culture in the workplace between one site and another, or one shift and another.

This practice fits the growing focus in the Kingdom on safe workplaces, and the role played by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development and other competent authorities in this area. To find out which requirements apply to your organisation, always refer to the official sources.

What the survey measures, and what it doesn’t

The survey measures	The survey does not measure
How employees perceive safety	The actual level of risk, measured technically
Awareness of procedures and emergency plans	Whether the organisation complies with regulations
Employees’ views on training and equipment	Whether equipment meets technical specifications
Willingness to report hazards	Employees’ health status
How employees rate leadership support	The causes of incidents after investigation

That is why the survey complements your other safety tools rather than replacing them.

Core areas for health and safety survey questions

A balanced template covers six areas:

1. Awareness and training: do employees know the hazards in their workplace and the emergency procedures?
2. Personal protective equipment: is it available, suitable and comfortable?
3. The physical work environment: heat, ventilation, lighting, noise, housekeeping and working posture.
4. Reporting hazards and near misses: is the process clear, and do employees feel safe reporting?
5. Leadership and communication: does safety get real priority over production pressure?
6. Workload and fatigue: do working hours and breaks allow people to work safely?

The complete occupational health and safety survey template (ready to copy)

The template uses a five-point agreement scale: (1) strongly disagree, (2) disagree, (3) neutral, (4) agree, (5) strongly agree, with a “doesn’t apply to my job” option.

Survey introduction:
“Dear colleague, your safety is our priority. This survey is anonymous and takes about five minutes. We use the results only to improve the work environment, never to assess anyone’s performance. Please answer honestly.”

Section 1: General information (non-identifying)

1. Type of work: (office / field / warehouse or operations / production or maintenance / customer service in a branch)
2. Site or department: (drop-down list)
3. Shift: (morning / evening / night / rotating)
4. Time with the organisation: (under one year / one to three years / more than three years)

Section 2: Awareness and training

5. I know the main hazards associated with my job.
6. I have received enough training to do my job safely.
7. I know what to do in the event of a fire or evacuation.
8. I know where the emergency exits, fire extinguishers and first-aid kit are.

Section 3: Personal protective equipment

9. The protective equipment my job requires is always available.
10. The equipment provided fits me and is comfortable enough to wear all the time.
11. Damaged equipment is replaced without delay.

Section 4: Work environment

12. Ventilation and temperature in my workplace are suitable.
13. Lighting is good enough for me to work safely.
14. Walkways and work areas are tidy and free of obstructions.
15. My workstation set-up (seat, desk, tools) helps me work in a comfortable position.

Section 5: Reporting hazards and near misses

16. I know how to report a hazard or a near miss.
17. I feel safe reporting, without fear of blame or penalty.
18. When I report a hazard, it is dealt with in a reasonable time.
19. I hear back about the outcome of the reports I make.

Section 6: Leadership and communication

20. My direct supervisor follows safety procedures and applies them in front of us.
21. We are not asked to bypass safety procedures to get work done faster.
22. Safety topics are discussed regularly in team meetings.

Section 7: Workload and fatigue

23. My working hours and breaks allow me to do my tasks safely.
24. I rarely feel so tired that it affects my concentration at work.

Section 8: Open questions

25. What is the biggest hazard you see in your workplace right now?
26. What is the first action you would suggest the organisation takes to improve safety?
27. Is there any training or equipment you need but haven’t received?

Note at the end of the survey:
“If there is a hazard right now, don’t wait for the survey results: report it to your supervisor or safety officer immediately through the approved channels.”

Adapting the template to your sector

Factories and warehouses

Add questions about forklifts, high-rack storage, manual handling of loads, and isolating machinery during maintenance.

Construction sites and field work

Focus on working at height, barriers, working in hot conditions during the summer months, and access to water, shade and rest breaks. Check the official instructions on outdoor work during midday hours at their approved sources.

Service branches and offices

Add questions on workstation set-up, eye strain from screens, handling customers in difficult situations, and car park safety.

Multilingual workforces

Many organisations in the Kingdom employ people of many nationalities, so offer the survey in at least Arabic and English, and check whether your team needs other languages.

How to roll out the survey in your organisation

1. Get senior management support and state the survey’s purpose clearly: improving the work environment, not looking for someone to blame.
2. Involve the safety officer and representatives from field teams in reviewing the questions.
3. Choose channels that suit the work: QR codes in break rooms, tablets at entry points, and a link for office staff.
4. Protect participants’ confidentiality: don’t ask for names or employee numbers, and don’t report very small groups separately so individuals can’t be identified.
5. Set a clear participation window, two weeks for example, and remind teams at the start of shifts.
6. Analyse results by site, shift and type of work.
7. Share a summary of the results and the action plan with employees shortly after the survey closes.
8. Repeat the survey periodically to track the effect of improvements.

Analysing results and building an improvement plan

Start with the questions that scored the lowest agreement, then compare them across sites. If you use an agreement scale, our article on the Likert scale explains how to calculate and read the averages.

Illustrative example: a distribution company in Dammam notices that the statement “I feel safe reporting” scored an average of 2.6 out of 5 on the night shift, against 3.9 on the morning shift. Management holds listening sessions with the night team, provides a QR-code reporting channel that doesn’t require a name, then measures again after three months. These figures are hypothetical and for illustration only.

You can also turn the survey into an always-on channel. In RateHex you can design a short “hazard observation” form that opens from a QR code at every site, with each observation automatically becoming a ticket with a set response time and escalation to a supervisor if it is late. The survey designer and dashboard features show results in real time for every site, with scheduled PDF and Excel reports for the safety team.

How to encourage honest participation

A survey is only as valuable as the honesty of its answers, and honesty depends on trust. Ways to build it:

• Explain where answers go and who sees them, and that results are reported in aggregate, never individually.
• Keep it short and easy: five minutes on a phone or a tablet in the break room beats a long paper form.
• Pick the right moment: the start of a shift or a break, not the end of an exhausting day.
• Show examples of past improvements that came from employee feedback, so people see the impact of taking part.
• Thank participants publicly at team level, without pointing to any specific answer.

Common mistakes in workplace safety surveys

• Linking results to performance reviews: it pushes employees to hide problems rather than surface them.
• Asking about employees’ health: this is sensitive data that has no place in this survey.
• Launching without a follow-up plan: silence after a survey erodes trust in the next one.
• Offering only an Arabic version in an organisation with many non-Arabic speakers.
• Using complex technical language that field staff don’t understand.
• Presenting results as blame rather than as opportunities to improve.

Important note

This template is general guidance for capturing employee views. It does not define the occupational health and safety requirements that apply to your organisation. For those, refer to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development and other competent authorities, and work with qualified safety professionals. Any urgent hazard should be reported immediately through the approved channels, not through the survey.

In summary

An occupational health and safety survey template gives management a picture that incident logs alone cannot, provided it is anonymous, clear and followed by actions employees can see. Start with the template above, adapt it to your sites, and share the results openly. To extend the survey to other parts of the employee experience, see our employee survey questions template.

Want to turn this template into an always-on channel for safety observations through QR codes and tablets across all your sites? Book a demo with the RateHex team, and we will show you how to set up the form, the tickets and the reports.