When conducting an employee satisfaction survey (ESS), HR managers often receive the question: "Is the ESS anonymous?", "Why is it anonymous if you use my email address?". The concern of employees lies in protecting their privacy. They are afraid that their potentially critical remarks will end up with their supervisor without them having control over it. HR departments in turn want to know to what extent they may share personal data of employees without consent. In this blog, we outline all information about anonymity and privacy regarding surveys.
What does anonymous employee research entail?
Anonymous research means that the data obtained in a survey cannot be 'identified by name'. All data traceable to a person is unknown. 'Anonymous' has a different meaning here than 'confidential'. Confidential is about the information itself and means 'private, secret, not generally available'. Anonymous means not directly traceable to an individual person.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of an anonymous employee survey
Using an anonymous employee survey (ESS) has both advantages and disadvantages. Here are some points to keep in mind:
Advantages of an anonymous employee survey:
- Honesty: Employees often feel freer to give honest feedback without worrying about reprisals or negative consequences for their career.
- Reliability: Anonymity promotes the reliability of the data, as employees are more inclined to respond candidly and sincerely.
- Objective insights: It helps in collecting objective insights and opinions from employees, without influence from hierarchy or personal relationships.
Disadvantages of an anonymous employee survey:
- Incomplete information: Anonymity can lead to a lack of specific details, context or clarifications in the received feedback, making it harder to find appropriate solutions.
- Reduced follow-up capability: Because the identity of respondents is unknown, it can be difficult to ask follow-up questions or obtain additional information.
- Abuse of anonymity: Sometimes anonymity can be abused by employees to make inappropriate or harmful comments without accountability.
What are the disadvantages of conducting an anonymous employee survey with free tools like Google Forms and Typeform?
Ensuring anonymity in an Employee Satisfaction Survey (ESS) is essential for obtaining honest and open feedback from employees. While tools like Google Forms can be convenient, they can present challenges in ensuring anonymity. Think of tracking respondents, perception of anonymity, survey management and limited data analysis capabilities.
- Tracking respondents: Google Forms records information about respondents by default, such as email addresses. Although you can disable this feature, employees may not always be aware of this and therefore doubt the anonymity of their answers.
- Perception of anonymity: Even if technical measures are taken to ensure anonymity, employee perception may differ. They may still feel that their answers can be traced back to them simply because the tool is linked to their work email account.
- Survey management: It can be difficult to verify that employees complete the survey only once with tools like Google Forms. This is because, to ensure anonymity, you must avoid using unique identification codes or logging in with company accounts.
- Limited data analysis capabilities: When survey results are collected anonymously with tools like Google Forms or Typeform, this can limit data analysis capabilities. It becomes difficult, if not impossible, to view results at team or function level.
Learned: Software for a truly anonymous employee survey
Learned offers companies software that allows you to easily conduct truly anonymous surveys without compromising on advanced analysis capabilities.
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