The Swiss PILOT ISSP 2015 WORK ORIENTATION survey is the pretest survey of the 2015 version of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP; http://www.issp.org) about ‘Work Orientation’ realized in Switzerland. The survey focuses on work values, work-life balance, worker flexibility and job search. Issues such as satisfaction at work, occupational commitment, relations at workplace, (temporary) unemployment, discrimination at work and personal economic situation are also covered. This pilot has been realized in Switzerland, Czech Republic, South-Korea, Venezuela, Germany and Israel with the scope to pretest and finalize the questionnaire for the main survey in 2015. In Switzerland, the pilot has surveyed several hundred residents of the German speaking part of Switzerland (several people from Lichtenstein were included too), between the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014 through web and paper questionnaires. The main ISSP survey is conducted every year in more than 40 countries over the world. Every edition of the ISSP covers a specific theme, which is repeated at a regular interval. In Switzerland, the ISSP modules are included in the MOSAiCH survey (Measurement and Observation of Social Attitudes in Switzerland; http://forscenter.ch/en/our-surveys/international-surveys/mosaich-issp-2/). The “ISSP 2015 Work Orientation IV” module will be integrated in the MOSAiCH 2015 survey along with the ISSP 2014 module ‘Citizenship II’ to be fielded in spring/summer 2015 with a representative sample of the resident Swiss population. Most questions of the present pilot survey will be fielded identically or slightly amended in the main survey in 2015 in all ISSP countries.