We were assured the results were only to be used in aggregate and no response would be possible to trace back to the individual who'd made it.
I almost fell off my chair laughing when the report had been compiled - the responses were anonymized. Of sorts. Responses used in aggregate. Of sorts.
The engineer, female, age bracket 40-49 years, $SITE in the office next door wasn't as amused.
As the sample size was one, her every response had been printed in the report.
Oops.
So often a direct manager can't see open ended text in their context but their skip level manager could.
They shouldn't have ever reported on a sample size of 1. That's a bad system
If you're working remotely this could easily identify you.
I should start responding to the survey behind a different VPN endpoint each time. See if anyone asks questions.
It emails people with some frequency between weekly and monthly, and it only asks you a few questions every time. Mostly it's a 1-10 scale thing, with cute little graphics.
It also asks open ended questions where you're told the answers are anonymous. That's all well and good, but if your manager can't figure out who's who from the tone of the message, they're a new manager.
And sure, it sounds like a great idea to spot issues. The instant two managers compare scores, or worse, are compelled to compare scores, all bets are off on it's usefulness. Then when you have a meeting where a high level manager painfully asks for input on how to make things better from the entire team while going over each chart in painful detail, the clear goal every individual contributor has is to just pick 8 or 9 and make the stupid meetings stop.