Employee Suggestions for Company Improvement: 30 Examples

Every engagement survey eventually asks some version of it: “What are the top things we should improve to make this a great place to work?” Most answers die in a spreadsheet because they arrive too vague to act on, and the cost is real: Salesforce Research found that employees who feel heard are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to do their best work.

The 30 employee suggestions for company improvement below are specific enough to act on. Use them as written or adapt them. These are company-level suggestions; for personal development answers on a review form, see our opportunities for improvement examples instead.

Communication and Transparency

Communication is the most common improvement theme in employee surveys, and the most commonly wasted. Useful suggestions name what information is missing, where it should live, and when it should arrive, rather than asking leadership to “communicate more.”

“Share the reasoning behind major decisions, not just the outcome. A short written summary after leadership meetings would prevent the rumor mill.”
“Give us a regular view into company performance. A monthly metrics review at all-hands would help teams connect their work to results.”
“Announce org changes before they leak. Even a day’s notice would build real trust.”
“Create one place where company priorities live. Right now they’re scattered across decks, docs, and Slack threads.”
“When plans change, explain what changed and why. Silent pivots make strategy look improvised.”

Meetings and Ways of Working

Meeting-related suggestions land well because the cost is visible to everyone, including leadership. The strongest ones propose a specific default to change: agendas, async-first updates, or protected focus time, instead of just declaring that there are too many meetings.

“Introduce two meeting-free focus blocks per week. Most of us can’t find three uninterrupted hours for actual work.”
“Require agendas for any meeting over 30 minutes. Meetings without a stated purpose usually don’t have one.”
“Default to async written updates for status reporting and save live meetings for decisions.”
“Audit recurring meetings quarterly. Several on my calendar have outlived their purpose.”

Career Growth and Development

Growth suggestions work best when they target the system rather than your own situation. Asking for promotion criteria, manager training, or non-management tracks improves things for everyone and reads as constructive rather than as a personal negotiation.

“Publish clear promotion criteria by level. It’s hard to grow toward a bar you can’t see.”
“Give every employee a small annual learning budget and make it simple to use.”
“Train managers on career conversations, not just project delivery. My 1:1s are all status updates.”
“Create growth paths that don’t require becoming a manager.”

Recognition and Feedback

Recognition suggestions should describe which work goes unnoticed and what visible recognition would look like. Companies rarely oppose recognition. They just lack a mechanism for it, so suggest the mechanism.

“Recognize the work that prevents problems, not just the work that fixes them. Quiet reliability goes unnoticed here.”
“Make peer recognition easy and public. A dedicated Slack channel would go a long way.”
“Deliver feedback closer to the moment. Hearing about something six months later in a review isn’t actionable.”
“Celebrate team wins, not just individual ones. Cross-functional projects disappear from the recognition radar.”

Tools, Processes, and Documentation

Process suggestions are the easiest for leadership to act on because they rarely require budget approval or cultural change. Point at the specific tool, document, or workflow that wastes time, and estimate the cost of leaving it broken.

“Fix the onboarding documentation. New hires lose their first month rediscovering things the team already knows.”
“Consolidate our project tracking tools. Three systems means none of them is current.”
“Document decisions where everyone can find them. Too much context lives in individual inboxes.”
“Invest in the internal tooling the team keeps flagging. Slow builds and manual processes cost more than the fix would.”

Workload and Work-Life Balance

Workload suggestions are the most sensitive to phrase, because they can read as complaints. Anchor them in staffing, norms, or planning practices, which are things leadership controls, rather than in how much work exists.

“Set realistic deadlines by involving the people doing the work in the estimate.”
“Respect working hours in communication norms. Late-night messages create pressure even with ‘no need to respond now’ attached.”
“Backfill open roles faster. The team has been absorbing two vacancies for six months.”
“Encourage people to actually take their PTO. Unlimited vacation means little if using it feels risky.”
“Normalize flexible hours around core meeting times instead of tracking presence.”

Cross-Team Collaboration

Collaboration suggestions should identify where work falls between teams and propose the lightest structure that would catch it. Ownership gaps and roadmap surprises are the two problems worth naming most often.

“Clarify ownership between teams. Work keeps falling into gaps because two teams each assume the other owns it.”
“Create a lightweight way to request work from other teams. Right now everything depends on knowing the right person.”
“Share roadmaps between departments so we stop discovering conflicts at launch.”
“Rotate short ‘how we work’ sessions between teams. Most friction comes from not understanding each other’s constraints.”

Quick Reference by Theme

Theme	What to Target	Sample Suggestion
Communication	Missing context from leadership	”Share the reasoning behind decisions”
Meetings	Defaults, not volume	”Introduce two meeting-free focus blocks per week”
Career growth	The system, not your case	”Publish clear promotion criteria by level”
Recognition	The missing mechanism	”Create a public peer recognition channel”
Tools and process	Specific broken workflows	”Consolidate project tracking into one tool”
Workload	Staffing and norms	”Involve the team in deadline estimates”
Collaboration	Ownership gaps between teams	”Share roadmaps between departments”

How to Write a Suggestion Leadership Will Act On

A suggestion gets acted on when it names a specific problem, proposes a first step, and connects to a business outcome. Suggestions fail when they’re too broad to assign to anyone, when they target individuals instead of systems, or when they arrive with no hint of what better looks like.

Three checks before you submit: could someone act on it without a follow-up meeting, does it target systems rather than individuals, and is the cost of inaction visible? “Slow builds cost each engineer an hour a day” moves faster than “our tooling is frustrating.”

Why Survey Suggestions Come Back Vague

Employees give vague answers because forms can’t ask follow-up questions. When someone types “communication could be better” into a survey box, the moment to ask “where, specifically?” is already gone. HR inherits a pile of one-liners that confirm a theme but never localize the problem.

Conversational approaches close that gap. Windmill’s pulse surveys run as Slack conversations where the AI agent Windy asks clarifying questions in the moment: chats average about 90 seconds and results land in hours, not weeks. That turns “meetings are a problem” into knowing which recurring meeting three teams want killed. For question ideas that prompt richer answers, see our pulse survey question examples.

The loop only works when employees see action: publish what was raised, what will change, and what won’t. That is what keeps suggestions coming.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are good employee suggestions for company improvement?

Good employee suggestions for company improvement name a specific problem, propose a concrete first step, and connect to an outcome the company cares about. 'Introduce two meeting-free focus blocks per week' is actionable. 'Improve work-life balance' is not. The best suggestions come from your direct experience, so leadership can verify and act on them.

How do I answer 'what should the company improve' on an engagement survey?

Pick two or three themes you have firsthand experience with, and for each one describe the problem, suggest a specific change, and note the expected benefit. Avoid naming individuals, especially in anonymous surveys. Specific, constructive answers are far more likely to drive action than broad complaints.

What are the top 3 things to improve to make a company a great place to work?

The themes employees raise most often are communication and transparency from leadership, visible paths for career growth, and recognition for meaningful work. If a survey asks for your top three, choose the areas where you can point to concrete examples from your own experience rather than the ones that feel safest to mention.

How specific should company improvement suggestions be?

Specific enough that someone could act on the suggestion without a follow-up meeting. Name the process, meeting, or tool involved and what should change about it. Stay at the level of systems and processes rather than individuals, which keeps the suggestion constructive and preserves anonymity in survey settings.

How can HR collect more useful improvement suggestions from employees?

Ask narrower questions, follow up on vague answers, and visibly close the loop on past suggestions. Employees stop offering ideas when nothing happens to them. Conversational survey tools help because they ask clarifying questions in the moment, turning 'communication could be better' into something a leadership team can actually fix.