Anonymous staff surveys

[hash tag]

Are they really anonymous? Do these things ever result in anything good being done?
My employer has just taken on a new broom and one of the first things they have done is sent out a survey.
I have answered mine honestly, not diplomatically and could be identified by it but I really don't give a toss.
It's loads of good, really good, really bad or bad type answers with two free form sentences allowed, one for good things, one for bad. I have put three or four home truths into my single sentence. Will anything come of it?
I have tried encouraging one or two outspoken colleagues to complete their's but to no avail.
Anyone have any experience of these things?

 

[StoneRoad]

I've had mixed experiences with such things.

The only truly anonymous survey was one that was supplied as hard-copy and could be returned in a plain envelope to reception, just with "survey" on it ...

I got someone else - a non-employee - to fill mine out, and another someone else to drop it off at reception [and used two of their envelopes].
Some aggregated "results" about general "job satisfaction" turned up in the staff newsletter a few weeks later, and a couple of the minor issues were addressed.
eg they changed the vending machine brands, especially the crap coffee, and several of the so-called kitchens got one of those boiling water on tap things.
second example, they dropped the car park charges down to something sensible and allowed more people to use it.
Nothing major that I was aware of changed - although they had another, wider round of recruitment for their pension scheme - which included a lot of lower paid / female staff.

 

[stdP]

Most of them are nowhere near anonymous - most will come with a unique identifier in the URL (such as https://totesanonymoussurveys.co.uk...urvey?id=defintielynotuniquetohashtagnosirree), or if they're hosted internally on your company intranet the servers will usually be able to hoover up your username when visiting the page.

These days the "external survey company with a unique ID embedded in the link" is the most common; an easy way to judge is to see if the link sent to you is the same as that of your cow-orkers.

In all of my years on the slippery rungs of the corporate ladder, I've yet to see any much come out of surveys - many of them are fashioned in such a way as to make the agenda they're barrelling towards transparently obvious anyway ("Is our plan to transform this tired old workforce in to a young, dynamic, go-getter of a company either a) great or b) REALLY GREAT??!?!?!") and most management types will typically ignore any findings they don't like.

I work in a company rich with IT propeller heads so they don't bother with the artifice of telling us the surveys are anonymous. They're mostly just used to gauge the effectiveness of various internal initiatives and occasionally in performance reviews but, being a series of largely binary questions, are pointless for anything requiring nuance. Almost all of the positive change I've experienced has either come from personal feedback played upwards through various tiers of management and the occasional tap on the shoulder from the union.

 

[Poot]

OMG beware, beware, beware!

My employer did this, told us it was anonymous and then hauled us into a meeting and made us 'explain ourselves' because of our negative answers. He shouted a lot. He was particularly pissed off that 'two people' (there were two women on the team) thought there was a problem with sexism. He explained very carefully and in detail to both of us why there wasn't. We all thought we were going to lose our jobs. Seriously, be very careful.

 

[tommers]

Obviously it depends on the company and it's difficult to change big structural things that are causing issues - which can mean people start to think the surveys are pointless.

But.. how do you expect them to know what's bothering you if you don't say? If you don't feel safe enough to tell them then an anonymous survey often gets info that otherwise doesn't come up.

Of course you should really feel safe enough to just say.

 

[danny la rouge]

Are they really anonymous?

No.

 

[mx wcfc]

The first time my work had one, it came back with results like "100% of Grade x staff aged 40 something, felt the bosses were wankers". It was a small office and it was perfectly obvious who had said what.

They don't ask as many questions about who you are these days, so the results are not so easy to read, though of course there is a record somewhere.

 

[Miss-Shelf]

We had one in my last workplace when the new boss joined at a time of super-low staff satisfaction and managed to turn it into an even lower experience of staff satisfaction

People were obviously (too) honest in the (apparently) anonymous online survey
At first, there was performatively genuine dismay and concern for the well-being of staff
Then it swiftly turned into a campaign of 'there are 145 people who are actively disengaged' and everyone else is fine - seems to be a management speak term for blaming employees for terminally rubbish conditions at work
One of the unions made badges saying actively disengaged which probably didn't help when we hit the next round of redundancies

 

[MickiQ]

 

[hash tag]

Obviously it depends on the company and it's difficult to change big structural things that are causing issues - which can mean people start to think the surveys are pointless.

But.. how do you expect them to know what's bothering you if you don't say? If you don't feel safe enough to tell them then an anonymous survey often gets info that otherwise doesn't come up.

Of course you should really feel safe enough to just say.

I have told my line manager, their boss and the head of a senior department. The head got someone to come and look, got back to me and said we can make/will make some changes...but did they hell
My name is already in the frame but nothing they can get rid of me for, besides, with the staff shortages they really cannot afford to lose anyone. Would they do anything about me speaking up; doubt it, they frequently bury their heads in the quick sand.

 

[ElizabethofYork]

I've filled in loads of them over the years. Nothing ever changed.

 

[hash tag]

The first time my work had one, it came back with results like "100% of Grade x staff aged 40 something, felt the bosses were wankers". It was a small office and it was perfectly obvious who had said what.

They don't ask as many questions about who you are these days, so the results are not so easy to read, though of course there is a record somewhere.

Their was a whole section on ethic origin, sexuality, age etc. It would be easy to pin me down with that. My line manager knows full well how I feel and has no argument over some of my gripes and also knows that I am not bothered about retribution. It's not just for my good but it's for the small department who are suffering and either can't see the issues or speak up.

 

[quimcunx]

We had one at my 20 ish people office about attitudes to returning to the office mid covid. I went throught it to read and screenshot the questions. I didn't submit it. I knew it would be fairly simple to ID us.

The next morning my boss emailed me to say she saw I'd been in the survey but not submitted. I checked the original email with the survey link and noticed it said it was a 'confidential' survey. No mention of anonymous.

I don't think anyone responded. It was a terrible survey by all and any measure.

 

[Elpenor]

They are and they aren’t as explained by others.

The one we used in my last job had over a million respondents across multiple territories so there were filters to view responses by age; team; length of service; job grade; gender etc, so if they know a male grade 4 employee in the HR team with 5+ years service thinks management is shit, by extension they also know who that person is.

Thankfully my new job doesn’t seem to do them.

 

[Poot]

OMG beware, beware, beware!

My employer did this, told us it was anonymous and then hauled us into a meeting and made us 'explain ourselves' because of our negative answers. He shouted a lot. He was particularly pissed off that 'two people' (there were two women on the team) thought there was a problem with sexism. He explained very carefully and in detail to both of us why there wasn't. We all thought we were going to lose our jobs. Seriously, be very careful.

Incidentally, the other woman told me after the meeting that she hadn't filled out the survey because she had an inkling that something like that would happen. Despite being told on pain of losing our bonus that we had to respond. It was one of the men who thought that the company was sexist. (And presumably despite knowing this our employer had just not bothered to check before launching off on one.) He took every response that wasn't 'Yay! We love this place!' to be negative. There was a question about inclusivity and race. If all of you are white, how can you possibly answer positively? That went right over his head.

 

[Sue]

He was particularly pissed off that 'two people' (there were two women on the team) thought there was a problem with sexism. He explained very carefully and in detail to both of us why there wasn't.

Hah, not down to a staff survey but my old workplace (after lots of female engineers left and posted stuff about sexism on Glassdoor) called all the remaining female engineers into a meeting.

The (male) COO then explained to them at great length how the company didn't have a problem with sexism and there was nothing to see here, move along etc. Someone mentioned the stuff people had posted on Glassdoor and he shrugged and pretty much said the reviews -- and therefore their experiences -- were wrong.

 

[Duncan2]

I just respond to every question neither agree or disagree and encourage as many of my colleagues as i can to do likewise.This is not so much because they can identify individuals for later targetting but because the feedback if it is provided at all comes months later and is invariably half arsed and deliberately vague.If they cant be bothered to take it seriously why should we.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Surveys are generally a waste of time in my experience.

 

[hash tag]

Surveys are generally a waste of time in my experience.

Or can be used to twist the responses...10 people said it was a great company, carefully omitting to say that 200 people had replied.

 

[stdP]

My employer did this, told us it was anonymous and then hauled us into a meeting and made us 'explain ourselves' because of our negative answers. He shouted a lot. He was particularly pissed off that 'two people' (there were two women on the team) thought there was a problem with sexism. He explained very carefully and in detail to both of us why there wasn't. We all thought we were going to lose our jobs. Seriously, be very careful.

At one place I worked, we got the same shtick from one sociopathically egotistical head of department once (as it turned out, my shortest tenure in my entire career at 11 months) who demanded to know why 80% of the people in the teams under him had labelled them as a bully, a misogynist, a racist, or a flat-out deluded cunt. HR had the details on who had said exactly what but they weren't allowing him to see it and he was infuriated, and rounded everyone in to a meeting room to have everyone explain who and what and why, on threat of not receiving a yearly bonus of "up to" £300. He was especially surprised that in a room full of nothing but men anyone could describe him as misogynistic, as if it were something only women could recognise or would have the sheer audacity to say. No-one in the room said anything and a month later half of his staff had handed in their notice (myself included). I should mention because it's probably relevant, but they were an american company rather than a british one and I feel their managerial style encapsulated that implied stereotype completely.

But.. how do you expect them to know what's bothering you if you don't say? If you don't feel safe enough to tell them then an anonymous survey often gets info that otherwise doesn't come up.

Of course you should really feel safe enough to just say.

There are some workplaces that are equipped - managerially and psychologically - to receive and act upon criticism. See above for one that wasn't, for whom everything was personal, my way or the highway. "Beatings will continue until morale improves" didn't become an axiom for no reason.

I'm genuinely lucky and grateful to have worked at so many places with a good relationship between the brass and their employees TBH. But recognising one that can or cannot is one of those things I usually try to identify by asking in interview questions - if you ask a blunt question and are given a blunt answer then you're generally dealing with a place where people are perfectly happy to speak out of turn and say boo to a ghost. If you're given procedurally generated waffle then you can generally assume there's either little to no managerial feedback or a flat-out adversarial relationship. I'm lucky enough to have been able to mostly avoid the latter kind.

 

[oryx]

As others have said, they're not anonymous. I remember one taking place where a few weeks later we analysed the (supposedly anonymised) results.

My boss seemed very keen to pin down one member of the team as having made negative comments, by using the person's level and region etc. My comment 'Isn't this sold to staff on the basis of being anonymous?' didn't go down too well.

So much for anonymity, going by the posts above, and by my experience. As for usefulness, you are more likely to be seen as not a 'good fit' for the organisation than to have any (very often valid) criticisms taken seriously, never mind addressed.

 

[spring-peeper]

Their was a whole section on ethic origin, sexuality, age etc. It would be easy to pin me down with that.

did you fill that part in?

I would not have. If they disregard my comments because of it, too bad.

 

[spring-peeper]

I can't see how any survey can be really anonymous.

Use the computer, and they know who you are. Filling in a printed copy by hand would show whose writing it was.

That being said, I've found that the surveys did bring some stuff up that could be fixed. (98% hate the piped in music - easy fix).

 

[kabbes]

I’ve used surveys and made sure they were properly anonymous to me, if not to the independent people collating the data. I also spent ages thinking about the wording of every question to try to make it unambiguous and useful. I included little survey tricks to gather underlying thought processes.

The usefulness of the results were not all I’d hoped for.

For a start, never underestimate the lengths somebody might go to to reinterpret the most straightforward question. You ask something like how long it takes to do something (not a real example) and they’ll respond by telling you what colour their pen is.

Second, what do you actually do with the results when every contradictory answer imaginable comes back?

People imagine that their answers are being ignored, but they forget that there are a lot of answers that come back. If half the respondents say black and the other half say white, it’s going to be hard to please everyone.

There’s definitely really useful data that comes back by reading between the lines, finding trends and looking for correlations. But that’s not stuff that is easy to communicate in pithy soundbites. Nor is it information that translates into straightforward changes. So the results may well be taken forward but in ways that aren’t obvious to those answering the survey.

I’m unconvinced that the effort of the survey is worth the hassle, in brief. Better to just talk to people. But I’m less cynical now at the attempt. People do generally want to genuinely know what the staff are thinking.

 

[Steel Icarus]

The staff surveys I get sent claim to be anonymous but if you give your name you're put into a prize draw. I don't bother with them.

 

[RubyToogood]

I think ours is vaguely useful. Management often respond to comments and sometimes even act on them somewhere down the line. It's clearly not that anonymous though and they do tell us not to say anything we wouldn't say to them directly.

They are generally well intentioned though and staff retention is big round here.

 

[mojo pixy]

I always do them, even when I'm sure they're not anonymous. I've been pulled up in the past by managers for answers I've given, I stand by them. But I'm a bolshy git, I take work seriously and I don't fuck about, and I'm a union member .. union member is important, join a union. Then see your boss try to discipline you for answering a survey honestly

 

[hash tag]

If you don't them then you are accepting the crap as the status quo and you should not whine and moan in the office.

did you fill that part in?

I would not have. If they disregard my comments because of it, too bad.

Yes. As I said already, I am happy to stand up and be counted. I answered honestly ( but most was tick boxes, with just two free form questions with limited room for reply ).
I am not looking for promotion, I am looking for a decent working environment, to get paid and eventually get a pension. If I don't get a pay rise, I can live with that, but I will have a clearish in as much as I have said my piece. We have been treated like we are the lowest of the low over the past 18 months and in my opinion, worse than most in the organisation I work for.

 

[kalmatthew]

We do them at work and they are done by am external company won provide back aggregate results with no identifiable group being less than 25 people which meets best practice for data anonnimisation.

I think part of the problem is that an organisation that takes this sort of annonimity seriously is far more likely to allready have routes to raise issues and a reasonable working culture. Somewhere that really needs to provide annonimity to allow staff to provide negative feedback is far less likely to do so!

 

[High Voltage]

I'd recently left a multi-national company but somehow still was on HRs contact list and was somehow sent an "anonymous company survey"

So, I filled it in - as I'd already left the company it didn't really matter to me

Some while later I was contacted by my old manager, it was pretty obvious who'd filled the survey in and I think he'd been grilled by HR as to if I was many any valid points - he admitted to me that I had and that they'd try to get things better

Went on to have a successful further 7 years of them working for me (as a supplier) . . . which was nice