It would be naïve for any leadership team to assume their employees don’t have concerns or hesitations when it comes to how anonymous surveys really are.
Unfortunately there’s a significant amount of suspicion around surveys – which makes it difficult to encourage employees to provide their authentic feedback, let alone any feedback at all!
In this article we discuss the hard truths head-on, so you can feel confident in speaking with your team about their survey concerns, and put their uncertainties at ease.
Distrust around employee surveys often stems from a lack of transparency in how survey data is collected, handled, and utilised.
Often, employees fear the backlash or negative consequences that may come after providing honest feedback – worrying that their responses could be traced back to them.
This fear is further bred by past experiences and horror stories of surveys being used against employees, or the belief that feedback is not valued or acted upon by management.
Combining all these things, it’s easy to understand why trust in anonymous surveys is eroded and discourage employees from full engaging in candid feedback.
Once employee data is loaded into Stribe’s system, our technology takes this information, scrambles it up, and gives each person an associated unique code.
When you participate in employee surveys, your responses are collected without asking for any personal details like your email or name – instead answers are attributed to the unique code which is used to keep track of answers.
Important to note: At no point in the process is a Stribe admin able to view unique codes or identify who is assigned to which code – this is what makes our technology so secure and anonymous. It is an incredibly intricate and detailed system that we have refined with the best IT specialists.
Yes, but your answers are always anonymous. Your responses are shown alongside all other colleague’s responses.
Admins are able to segment responses into demographic groups – such as departments and locations – but we only show these breakdowns to admins when five or more people from a given group have responded, to ensure anonymity is maintained.
If you choose to leave any additional written comments on a survey, then your Stribe admin will be able to view these responses, however your name will never be attached. If five or more people from your team give written feedback, your team’s name (e.g. Marketing or Sales) will be displayed alongside your comment.
To help you give written feedback without giving away your tone of voice or identifying indicators, you can use Stribe’s Word Tiles to communicate general themes and feelings.
As mentioned earlier, your personal information is separated entirely from your survey response answers. Instead, the Stribe system associates each person with a unique and hidden code.
The code essentially acts like an incognito profile for your survey data, making sure it’s organised into certain demographics like department and location – but without revealing who said what.
So, even though your email and name are collected initially, once the Stribe system anonymises the data, that information is completely separated from your answers.
Your employer has engaged Stribe for a reason – and that’s to build a better workplace for yourself and your colleagues.
Talk to your Stribe survey admin about the what, who, when, why and how of your workplace surveys to truly understand their plans for the future.
Trust in the process, change will come once you’ve done your part in providing honest genuine feedback, and you employer has had the opportunity to take action and prove to you your voice matters!
The short answer is yes. Stribe is, and always will be, fully anonymous. We’re proud to have worked with some of the UK’s best employers and have always kept our promise to anonymity standards.
Our commitment to anonymity protects employees first, and creates an environment of trust and respect that ultimately ensures that Stribe is used to its full potential – allowing feedback that is honest, authentic and detailed.
When it comes to looking at the results, survey data is grouped and analysed in categories like departments or roles, not by individual names. This way, patterns and areas for improvement can be identified without knowing who said what.
At Stribe we also restrict segmentation of results to a minimum number of five responses to ensure anonymity is maintained even during data processing.
We’re often asked by teams onboarding Stribe about how to encourage fair feedback from their teams, rather than criticisms that aren’t always helpful in finding solutions for the future.
The answer is simply communication and education. Discuss this pain point with your employees in team meetings and in your survey communication plans.
Let them know – very importantly – that you are not afraid of negative feedback and that you encourage people to speak up about challenges – however for everyone to reach common goals, feedback needs to be delivered constructively and with ideas for solutions. We’ve got resources for responding to negative feedback and tips for giving constructive criticism.
We have a cool feature that allows for this!
When answering a ‘Follow-up question’ within a pulse survey, employees will see a check box allowing them to choose whether they want to receive a message in response to their feedback. If an employee feels comfortable to tick ‘Yes’, they will still remain anonymous.
By default, the option is ‘Off’ so no one can never mistakenly agree. If they do agree, a button will appear within their response in the survey report. Admins can use this to create a message directly from their comment.
These messages are managed within Stribe in the same way as our current anonymous messenger feature.
You can read more about this feature in our Stribe’s Help Centre.
It’s all about communication and being completely open with your team. They will inevitably have questions, and we’re here to help you answer them, so everyone feels comfortable with the survey process.
Our how-to article on helping your employees understand how anonymous surveys work is a helpful resource that you’re able to share with your team, and our anonymity statement is something we encourage you to share.
We’re also more than happy for you to direct your team to our People Scientists if they have any concerns or questions. We totally understand where the distrust comes from when it comes to employee surveying, and can help you alleviate these concerns with your team.
About the author
Starting out her early career as a journalist, Jade Madeley is an accomplished content writer with 8+ years’ experience across business, personal finance, SaaS, human resources and employee engagement. Working with Stribe, she crafts insightful content that brings complex HR topics to life and drives meaningful action.
