‘Anonymous’ employee survey

[MrsMuddle]

Our company does an annual staff survey through an external company. We are assured repeatedly that it is anonymous and that responses from teams of fewer than five people aren’t counted to ensure anonymity etc etc. You get the picture. We have branches worldwide and are well known in our field. We are a large company.

One of the partners asked if it was me who commented (negatively) on the gender pay gap and then proceeded to mansplain pay parity and pay gap. I was so taken aback, that I said “No, I don’t think that was me”. But it was. And now I’m raging that something we were assured was anonymous isn’t.

I also commented on the institutional sexism and lack of diversity.

My question is, do they KNOW it was me (ie what information does the third party give them) or did they guess correctly? If they know for sure it was me, I am at risk of losing my job. They do not like dissent.

Could have guessed from age and sex

My company is 95% male and so this is an issue for me as well.

If I'm going to say stuff like that I put prefer not to say for sex and also for which part of the org I work in.

You should complain to HR I think.

Or at least email them and say what has happened and you're concerned.

I read the answers from
Our employee survey and I can very often guess who says what in free text answers. It’s to easy to recognise writing styles and issues. The external company wouldn’t give actual employees responses.

One of the partners asked if it was me who commented (negatively) on the gender pay gap and then proceeded to mansplain pay parity and pay gap. I was so taken aback, that I said “No, I don’t think that was me”.

I find disingenuous innocence works really well, "I'm a bit confused about the question, honestly. I thought you wanted an anonymous survey."

And yes, talk to HR.

We didn’t give sex and gender. We all got a link emailed to our work email, so totally not anonymous to the third party.

@Twickerhun that’s put my mind at rest. I’m prepared to deny, deny, deny if they don’t know for sure. Any I will speak to HR if I’m asked again. Thanks.

I can be in the same boat.
We are assured surveys are anonymous but I'm the only female senior manager in one male dominated directorate with only 5 females overall.
It's really easy to identify me.

I'd complain to HR (without admitting you made the comments) that a partner has made incorrect assumptions and is trying to identify individual respondents.

They won’t know who said what. It’s guess work on their part, and looking to try and identify who through any info revealed through such conversations. Don’t give any info. away they will only ever know for sure if you tell them. Likewise don’t blab to colleagues, who may well feed it back. If your job relies on the confidentiality no one should be trusted. Personally wouldn’t write to HR on this one, unless they start treating you differently on their assumption they think it could be you. Otherwise you could inadvertently are challenging the anonymity of the survey due to your answer, and no need to do so as it will be anonymous. If there was a breach of the data accidentally, and your based with in Europe or UK, they legally should inform you due to GDPR.

I have been involved in the administration of these surveys and cascading results to managers. They are definitely anonymous, your manager has just taken a guess.

I would report it to your GDPR officer.

I work in this field, and yes, I can pick out who made comments fairly easily (I know many people well, and know the demographics so can put two and two together), but we would never directly respond to them or question them. And anyone who did would be in big trouble.

We have these, and I have to read it through and then do a spreadsheet with all the free text fields and then edit my comments and writing style (esp UK/US spellings) so that I am less identifiable. My boss has 8 direct reports in 4 different countries so it would be pretty easy otherwise. I think the comments they only get as a block so they aren't associated with anything else and no age/sex/job associated with the survey, but obv they are attached to your team, so the guys in manufacturing or service are much less identifiable due to numbers rather than in the more specialised teams which is an issue

I had similar, only we had to give team/dept, manager, age range, sex and grade which were then included in the info given to HR and managers... super useful when our team of 4 had no overlap (2 females and 2 males in different age brackets), I had a follow up email from HR CCing in my manager about concerns from my response to the 'anonymous survey'. Irony was completely lost on them 🤦‍♀️

It sounds like a guess rather than knowing for sure but really poor form on your employers part.

I had this at my work. We were assured it was anonymous and badgered every month to complete the latest survey. Then I found out my boss was getting to read her responses from our team of four and as we do different roles from different places she openly said she was able to work out who was who. We had all been pretty negative as she was toxic. Never been honest again! Anonymous my arse.

I gave honest feedback once and my manager proceeded to complain about the person who did so...I did not own up but hardly ever do feedback now!

We get asked to do an anonymous survey at work now and again but you have to log in to your email and then follow a link lol, obviously not very anonymous

I've always had my doubts that it isn't anonymous and last time my doubts were confirmed by my line manager

My dept were asked to go upstairs for a meeting and on the way up I happened to be next to my manager. I asked him what the meeting was about and he said the negative feedback that out dept had given

Strange how they knew which dept it had came from when no questions asked where you work in the company

I absolutely slated the dept one year, if they want feedback then they're opening themselves up for it. There's no point lying, nothing changed as usual and it never will

What platform are they using?

We have this - managers only receive their responses if they have xx number of people or higher, and then THEIR boss gets of those plus their own immediate teams comments, and this goes up the chain - you get the picture. But 100% none of them have names attached, but they are tagged to a team because otherwise... how would people know what they need to work on? No point in submitting a comment saying 'my manager doesnt praise me enough' and it going into a pot of 1000 comments read by all managers and they dont know who its for, it needs to be heard by your manager. However, if your manager knows what your complaints are and/or writing style, it can be easy to pick out whose are who depending on the size of the team and how many people actually fill the survey in.
@CyberdyneSystems does that make a bit more sense in your scenario? Its anonymous as in not linked back to you, but it has to be linked to your team as otherwise there's no point sending it.

They shouldn’t be getting results in cell sizes that are smaller than 5 or so, but when you know the people that is still pretty granular.

I don’t tend to provide free response answers on these surveys since I worry about my writing style being recognizable. It is a lost opportunity for certain. We also have a chance to submit questions to a monthly office hours and I worry about being recognized there as well.

TDMN

Yes that makes more sense but I'll still never be confident that it's 100% anonymous

I've been a manager in an organisation that does this. You do get some - or all - of the freeform answers and if you know your team it is easy to ID the ones that are critical, positive or talk about a particular subject of interest (one never lost an opportunity to complain about the air conditioning!). Having said that, they absolutely should not be publicly trying to work out who the individuals are (can't stop yourself working it out in your own head) and I agree with pp who say you should deny this and raise it with HR. We used to get people (understandably) refuse to fill in the survey for this very reason (confidentiality).

Are you the only woman in your team? Has he asked all the women who wrote those comments (i.e. is he singling women out to wang on about the sex pay gap?)? Or has he asked every team member about it? If there is an overlaid sexist angle to his questioning you could raise that with HR as well, in a 'it wasn't me who put the questionnaire response in, but I'm not surprised they raised issues related to sexism if this is the immediate response...'.

Thank you everyone for your advice.

To answer some questions.

The platform is Peakon. I’m not the only female but I’m one of a small handful who would be likely to speak up. I’m not in the UK (although working for a UK company) and the local women who I work with would never speak up. Another comment was made yesterday by the same partner and I said “You know how I feel about the gender pay gap. I don’t need to put it in a survey.” I’m confident, thanks to all your responses, that he is fishing but doesn’t actually know.

The whole thing is a farce. We were pressurised a lot to complete them to show ‘high level of engagement’ but nothing ever changes as a result of them. Thanks again for putting my mind at ease.

Ah. The 'anonymous' staff survey. We used to do these. Until one year, the comments were sent back to each team manager to address. Clearly they weren't anonymous or they couldn't have got back to each team. They had to stop doing them after this because nobody would fill them in once it was clear they weren't anonymous.

So with Peakon, depending on the level of access he has been given, he can see all comments from his staff. Comments are not all lumped together like some surveys but a manager can see the scores and comments for anything above the minimum number of responses set by the company. In mine you have to have 6 responses or above to access the data.

We used to have these independent staff surveys carried out. As CEO I could not identify who made particular comments - they were all anonymised and not given by department or sex but often my Directors would guess at who said what just because of what was said or how it was written. Some staff have a reputation or are known to hold certain views. But we couldn't know if their guesses were correct. I think maybe your boss said those things because he guessed it was likely to be you - he knows you better than you realised. But I would raise it with HR as he shouldn't be approaching you about remarks he imagines have come from you. It defeats the purpose of the survey - staff feeling free to give frank feedback.

As mentioned in your OP small teams were lumped in with bigger departments so they couldn't be identified.

Oh lord, Peakon. Is that the one that describes people as "detractors" when reporting the results? I get that it's based on net promoter type scores so uses similar language, but good grief. I have worked somewhere where the anonymous Peakon results were shared with employees and everyone was looking at each other wondering who the "detractors" were.

We have similar surveys at our firm...they are most definitely not anonymous as too many people have been taken to task about their answers for them to be confidential!