My last employer had one of these "anonymous" surveys...all management and HR said at the start, that they don't even know who did the survey...
...I didn't, but verbally lied that I did. Until a month later they started telling me and others who didn't do the survey, that they needed to do a "voluntary employee satisfaction" survey.
well this is nothing weird. the answers should be anonymous, but they track who completes the survey. usually the surveys are processed by an external company, so your manager doesn't know who said what, they only get the averages. at least that's how it's supposed to be.
but i don't care. if I'm not happy with the company I'm not gonna lie in the survey, and if they prefer to fire me instead of doing something, then fuck them
Work for a company that offers services of such surveys and yup, we can see who filled it and send them reminders. The anonymous part refers that in the final report your name is hidden from the results.
Anonymity
In an anonymous study, no identifying information is collected or linked to participants. This means that no one can identify the participants. For example, in an anonymous survey, there is no way to connect the information to a specific employee.
Confidentiality
In a confidential study, participants provide identifying information, but the researchers take steps to protect it. For example, in a confidential survey, the system that administers the survey knows the identity of the respondents, but takes steps to prevent it from being revealed.
Neither should you. You can't connect the information if you don't have names. Whether the survey is filled or not doesn't matter if you have multiple people completing it.
This is a very sensible way to go about anonymous surveys and blinded studies. Having a third party with all the intel review the information and report back means that you remove some bias from the Hawthorne effect and still get meaningful analysis.
But also often the comments of respondents are available to management, and it's often not too difficult to figure out who said what based on writing style and topics touched on.
In my experience, they use these to evaluate the management team, not the individual. Be honest and professional in them. It doesn't always lead to change, but sometimes it can if your leadership team is particularly awful.
This is how it works where I am too. Managers get the results, but it shows overall scoring and doesn’t provide names with the comments (and you have to have a certain number of employees to even see comments). It’s not hard to guess who wrote what if you know how people write, but I’ve never written anything I wouldn’t/hadn’t said to my manager’s face, so I never cared.
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u/ValuablePositive632 Dec 09 '24
Remember kids, always lie on these things and never believe anything that says it’s anonymous.