Anonymous staff surveys

[Boudicca]

If it's done by an external market research agency and says it is anonymous, then the agency is bound by the Market Research Society code of conduct and it will be anonymous. And hopefully the agency will be reporting back with objective findings.

 

[Sasaferrato]

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

A manger who berated me for survey responses, was more than slightly taken aback when I pointed out that I'd told him to his face, that he was as much use to me as a chocolate fireguard in his position as my manger.

 

[Sasaferrato]

.

 

[furluxor]

I guess it depends on the employer. I've worked in HR and participated in processing these surveys. First my manager and I would read them and collate the data. Comments would be preserved but we'd edit out swear words/slurs, just blacking them out and leaving the sentence intact, you could still understand what was meant. Comments would be grouped under different topics so individuals wouldn't be identifiable. I'd mix up the order as well so you couldn't track a person from question to question. My manager would add additional (separate) comments to help senior management interpret the data, and prep a summary. Then the senior management would read the summary and the collated data. Sometimes someone would want access to the original forms to know who said what, my manager would say no.

Would anything get done? For the most part, no, the survey would be dressed up nicely and presented by the CEO as 'lots of positives' and 'some things to work on'. It really depends on what the management want from that survey. Gossip? Internal marketing material? Or points for improvement? It also gets forgotten within a week unless issues identified in the survey are worked into individual and departmental plans/goals, with a clear system of measurement and accountability.

 

[hash tag]

I did the survey open and honestly. The all staff feed back was managers and directors should be more visible and they would work at this. Months later there is no sign of anyone. For 3 weeks now my manager has been off sick (stress?). Has anyone even dropped by to just say hello. Just empty promises.

 

[WouldBe]

If the staff are anonymous who do they who to give the surveys to?

 

[tim]

Surveys are generally a waste of time in my experience.

How would you rate them on a scale of one to five?

 

[hash tag]

How would you rate them on a scale of one to five?

0.

 

[newme]

I just had one of these, 'anonymous' but I had to enter my name, department, line manager, their email etc. Also there's a tracker which says what date you completed it. Which makes it damned obvious even if it actually went through anonymous as claimed.

 

[pseudonarcissus]

I just had one of these, 'anonymous' but I had to enter my name, department, line manager, their email etc. Also there's a tracker which says what date you completed it. Which makes it damned obvious even if it actually went through anonymous as claimed.

Of course it's anonymous, but I thought the way you answered question 5 was a little unfair

I had a diversity one last week...in nearly 40 years it's the first time I've been asked my sexuality. Had I answered as I did when I was at my first job, I'd have been fired.

Coincidentally, we have head office managers visiting to say they are going through a process of quote "de-arseholeiffication" in the upper ranks (and some of the stories were horrific; no wonder so many female staff left some offices) so maybe things are getting better.

 

[hash tag]

The conclusion of our staff survey was the powers that be need to make themselves more "visible". To do this, Simone puts out an occasional podcast. I have two seniors off and have been so for a while, likewise the manager and asst. Manager. The was a meeting in our meeting room which inc. directors during the week. Did one of them say hello. Ignorant bastards and so much for surveys.
Despite the nature of my work I have not had a one to one for years and there were no discussion regarding my appraisal, it was just signed.
The remaining senior will not have seen I have had 5 weeks leave approved later in the year without referral to the directors
Bastards, the lot of them.

 

[abe11825]

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.

At one of my jobs, the survey wasn't hosted on internal servers, but one of those "Survey Monkey" sites. Yet, it had our own specific ID to it, so once you took it (let's say at home where there is less prying eyes from co-workers), you couldn't take it again or finish it another time (on another computer if you decided to complete it at work before you clocked in). Once the link was clicked, you had to start and complete it from that machine.

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.

That's bullshit and fucked up. Calling you out for looking at the survey and not submitting anything. More reason these things are tracked even though we are all promised we're not being tracked. It's the whole unique ID thing.

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.

Agreed. Although I hate when you get the vague questions on any survey - work or otherwise. Sometimes the answer to the question isn't as simple as filling in those bubbles and it requires an answer. But yea, if they can't be bothered, why should anyone else.

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.

Using the same job from first answer, we'd get the "great place to work!" surveys every year. Had to fill out various agree/disagree questions, give some basic line answers to others. Out of 1200 employees, it never failed that we'd get the logo to slap on our email signatures that we're a top rated employer. Yet, at least 100 people would gripe on a daily basis on how shit the place is, and this is even with long serving employees (15 years plus). The reason the business got the rating was there was a group who had a massive language barrier. Most of them knew someone who was bi-lingual and had that person take the survey / fill in the questions with high marks. Overall, they loved the place for various reasons (most got to do what they please... I've had experience with a core group of the workers and have also talked to tenured employees. We've all shared similar challenges with this group and we all were frustrated for picking up their slack, among other incidences). I know not everyone took the survey because it was useless to do, but the ones who did got as screwed as the ones who didn't, because that language barrier group made it look like everyone was enjoying rainbows and lollipops. 200 negative surveys down the drain.

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.

I've had those questions on how easy it is to reinterpret them. I've also gone the way of "describing the color of my pen" for it too. Only because it reads like they're asking specifically about your manager but it also could be about the higher up leadership. You never know, so to be broad as possible with still giving an opinion is a little hard. Those who attend the company wide meetings to discuss things knew we were being ignored but not being ignored. Depending on who was in the meeting, the leadership would bring up a situation that affected the entire company, but if certain departments fill the room, the comments would not be made. Yet at the next group meeting, it might have been talked about (there were 1200 people, so they had to split up the firm wide meetings into several 1 hour lectures. I sat in all of them when they were in my area because I had nothing else to do... I was the one setting the room up anyway, so why not get paid to sit in a corner for a couple hours and use my phone).


Overall, the surveys can be right shit and it feels like nothing gets accomplished, especially with a big enough company. By the time I left the job, I was so burned out from the games the leadership played, that I had been very vocal to people there that I knew I could make comments to, and get away with it. They were the same people who were questioning the leadership as well, but the unfortunate part was they lived there, as it was a community I worked for. A year later, I've talked to a couple residents who have said that everything is still stead fast on going downhill and so much other bad has happened. They all wish they could move out of that place. I understood what they were saying as before I left I had seen behind the scene presentations (stuff I wasn't supposed to know but was privy to, only because I had to load it on computers for private meetings) and that was part of my talking to people. The rich and jaded remain the rich and jaded no matter how much the average worker wants to change things.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

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

I've done some digital marketing training recently that touched on social media, not just in terms of social media teams who run the official accounts, but employees and social media generally. There was a statistic, not sure where from, that said around 20 per cent of staff are actively trying to sabotage a company at any one time, or something like that, which I raised my eyebrows at, thought it was quite high. I mean, benign neglect or disinterest, yeah, but actively trying to sabotage?

 

[newme]

We have those, but it's not linked at all. I found I could login from a personal laptop with a vpn set to another country. Also.meant you could take it as many times as you liked. I couldn't be bothered but it seems an issue really....

 

[Sasaferrato]

I've done some digital marketing training recently that touched on social media, not just in terms of social media teams who run the official accounts, but employees and social media generally. There was a statistic, not sure where from, that said around 20 per cent of staff are actively trying to sabotage a company at any one time, or something like that, which I raised my eyebrows at, thought it was quite high. I mean, benign neglect or disinterest, yeah, but actively trying to sabotage?

80:20 rule.

 

[newme]

80:20 rule.

Pareto, it seems to work. I do 80% of my useful work in 20% of the time available.

 

[Sasaferrato]

Pareto, it seems to work. I do 80% of my useful work in 20% of the time available.

When I started as a medical rep, my manager told me that 20% of my doctors would give me 80% of my business, he was right.

He also told me that spending time on the Asian doctors would pay off. I took a group of Asian doctors to the Forth Bridge celebrations, they gave me 60% of my business that year, and I got 'visit requests' from virtually every Asian doctor on my patch. It transpired that the vast majority of reps in Edinburgh and the Borders had no time for Asian doctors, and didn't bother with them.

One of the doctors I took to the Forth Bridge do invited Mrs Sas and me to their home for dinner, when I mentioned this at a conference, it turned out that none of the 62 other reps had ever had that happen.

 

[ouirdeaux]

I still find it a bit odd that 20% are actively sabotaging the company, though it may depend on how sabotage is defined. I wouldn't be surprised to find that 20% of employees, or indeed more, were happy to get away with the least they could, and might nick the odd pen or use the printer for private use. But seriously discontented employees are likely to be people who feel that they are trapped where they are, so they'd be less likely to want to damage the place that employed them to the extent that their jobs, hated though they were, would be at risk.

 

[Raheem]

I was once in a meeting where a middle-manager proposed that the standard equal opps monitoring form should be de-anonymised. She drew attention to the "gender" and "sexual-orientation" sections, saying that anonymity meant a "valuable signposting opportunity" was being missed. She didn't mean conversion therapy or anything. More like a applicants could get leaflets with titles like "So you're bisexual now is it?"

I suggested that applicants would be less likely to fill the form in, and wouldn't necessarily welcome our comforting arm in respect of their sex-life anyway.

She said "I hear what you're saying, but I really do think it's important to triangulate."

I didn't explore the meaning of that with her any further.

This is all true and actually happened.

 

[Voley]

I answered one honestly once and signed it because I really couldn't have cared less anymore. Couple of months later, (entirely coincidentally I'm sure) my job was formally at risk of redundancy. It turned out alright in the end - I still work for the firm just in a much more enlightened department - but I was pretty close to being redundant.

So yeah, I won't be answering one frankly again unless I'm at the point of no return.

 

[ouirdeaux]

I answer surveys honestly, and with absolutely no expectation that there is any point to the exercise. Indeed, the pointlessness of the thing is something I will generally highlight.

 

[Steel Icarus]

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.

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.

I've skipped the survey once a year bollocks and am now on the staff council where I can ask difficult questions direct to a big nob or two

 

[DaveCinzano]

I answer surveys honestly, and with absolutely no expectation that there is any point to the exercise. Indeed, the pointlessness of the thing is something I will generally highlight.

+1

Recently I heard some colleagues discussing criticisms raised in the last survey that had been mentioned in a summary - they were all ‘but I don't understand, it's just so negative, this is a great place to work!’ etc etc

BUT THESE ARE ALL THINGS I BRING UP RELENTLESSLY AT EVERY SINGLE MEETING! Seeing as all the other constructive critics were purged out of the team it's really not a secret who submitted what. Banging your head against a brick wall so it is.

 

[PR1Berske]

We're going through that TED process which has come exactly as I'd predicted. A coterie of clingers are tottering around playing Apprentice while the rest of us do actual work. The anonymous feedback website is hilarious, you can tell which comments are left by managers because they can't help use words/phrases like "setting the agenda" and "positive contributions" while actual workers have typed "we've still got manky chairs" and "this has nowt to do with my job".

I'm amazed that it's still online.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Do people look at Glassdoor? It's like tripadvisor for workplaces. Absolute pain in the arse to get much info out of without signing up, telling them how much you earn etc. But it can be amusing/interesting/a good game of "spot the former colleague".

 

[Pickman's model]

oops

have you any other thoughts on [my employer]

gave it both barrels. excellent if i'm on the other side of the desk, not so good from this side. everything good that happens happens in spite of the senior management, not because of them. spoke truth to power about the way they relied for years on obsolete version of windows internet explorer for hr things.

they caught me at a bad time to send round a survey as i'm mad as hell and won't take it any more.

 

[DietCokeGirl]

Firstly year I saw dragged up in to a management role, I was horrified to learn the free text/comments of our staff survey are collated and shared with team managers albeit "anonymously". If you know your teams written / email style it's clear as day whose written what.

 

[InArduisFouette]

Firstly year I saw dragged up in to a management role, I was horrified to learn the free text/comments of our staff survey are collated and shared with team managers albeit "anonymously". If you know your teams written / email style it's clear as day whose written what.

doubly so if demographics are also shared

but yeah, my written style is fairly distinct esp given i'm one of the few native english speakers in our team

there have been reports etc that i have been asked to review and check by others ( often trainers when we are going to get rid of a agency bod or probationer who is shit at the job and won;t take good , meaningful coaching and support from any of the trainers or the other 'senior' operatives

"who proofed and edited that for you ? was it IAF or was it Grumpy ? "

 

[Pickman's model]

so at one of my jobs there's a review going on into library provision. i finally got round to filling the 18 page 'help us make this good' form yesterday. but so many of the suggestions have no redeeming features (eg reduced opening hours, shrinking the size of the library space) that i got really riled and at one point told them in no uncertain terms that this was one of those things you cannot polish

 

[hash tag]

I've just brutally completed this year's survey. Questions asked include team, sub section of team, place of work, a pointer to age, sex, ethnic origin, disabilities etc. There could be no mistaking who completed it.