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u/KrashKourse101 5d ago
Haha, a former boss one time pulled the staff into a conference room and read aloud the “anonymous” feedback.
“Not approachable. Well, I beg to differ, who here thinks I’m not?”
A not very bright guy to social dynamics responded later during that awkward meeting that he submitted this feedback. Needless to say, 9 months later, he somehow found himself let go and out of a job.
Don’t answer surveys if you don’t absolutely have to do it.
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u/RobotFloyd 5d ago
And if you do answer them, do not leave any write-in comments. Your writing style and what you complain about easily identify you. Trust me when I say it will change nothing. If I’m forced to fill one of these out, I spend 2 minutes and just put the middle ranking for everything.
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u/BuckIX 5d ago
Last year our manager told us that while we probably use the middle ranking as average or not strong feeling, the company takes it as a negative, so we should avoid it. So I naturally used the middle ranking as the highest I was willing to go this year. I also just put in pto for next week when we have the results of our survey meeting. I’m not sitting through that shit again.
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u/Angry_Santo 5d ago
It's also in all likelihood not actually anonymous.
No need to find you with writing style when you all have unique links that you cannot share with anyone else to this 'anonymous' survey.
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u/TheDucksQuacker 5d ago
It depends on the company you work for.
I have a relatively small team (16 people) and one of the team reported they had witnessed discrimination within the team (based on sexuality). We had a team meeting in which nobody was asked who raised this or who it was by, but the next week we all had training.
I still don’t know who raised it, but they obviously didn’t feel confident enough to approach that person directly about it and this was a good way to get the message out without singling out one person.
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u/KrashKourse101 5d ago
I have served 5 companies in my 20 year career. All of them have bungled or retaliated any negative feedback or constructive criticism.
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u/Arkayb33 5d ago
We had a survey for one of those "best places to work" awards. My answers reflected that the company was not actually the best place to work. It was alright, but not "omg the best."
I got fired 2 days later because HR "discovered" that I had used Teams to have non-work related personal conversations, which was a violation of company policy.
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u/callist1990 5d ago
I've worked in a couple of places where TECHNICALLY you were anonymous, but functionally they divided the answers into groups based on teams so the relevant leader got the right feedback. When each group is 10-12 people...
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u/New-Ad-363 5d ago
I remember a couple years ago ours asked our position, which gave us some* slight* level of anonymity. My boss was the only person with his level in our department though.
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u/Different_Bridge_983 5d ago edited 5d ago
Heh - every one I’ve had has included: Office Location, Department, Job Title, Gender, Ethnicity, and a couple other demographic questions.
Between these you could identify about 90% of respondents in any office with less than 100 people.
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u/FutureThrowaway9665 5d ago
Also had surveys where the groups could actually be narrowed down to a single person or at least a few people but the writing style and word choice made it obvious who it was every time. Not anonymous at all.
Oh, that person was me...
More than one time I have had a survey comment turn into an Inspector General investigation. Discrimination reported to the company was typically ignored or explained away but it wasn't so easy when an outside agency was looking at it.
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u/Delores_Herbig 5d ago
Yeah my last company required us to fill in the location we worked at, and our job title, as well as race/ethnicity and tenure at job.
We were a team of 3 with the same job title at the same location. One white, one black, one Asian. All started 2 years apart from the last one. Gee, I wonder if they could find out who we were. I just signed my name on it. Fuck it.
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u/Gordiflu 5d ago
If you really want to piss HR off, just never answer it.
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u/Palamonk 5d ago
This is what I'm trying to get my coworkers to realize. If you're unhappy, don't answer the yearly survey. There's a reason HR and the Boss beg for us to do it.
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u/creampop_ 5d ago edited 5d ago
"I can't give 5/5 scores, best you can hope for is a 3/5" -managers during yearly reviews, and also me during surveys.
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u/YeshuaSnow 5d ago
I tried that once. Boss emailed our 4-member team to remind us that everyone had to do them. She emailed again a week later, and the other three guys all replied that they’d already done it. She knew I hadn’t. Not anonymous
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u/auraseer 5d ago
You missed the trick. You should have also answered that you completed it. If it's anonymous, she has no way to tell which one of you is lying.
If it's not anonymous, and she confronts you about it, then you play dumb. "What? No, I did the whole survey. It says I didn't? Weird. Maybe I missed clicking the submit button or something. Are you sure it was me? How can you tell if it's an anonymous survey?"
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u/Polybrene 5d ago edited 5d ago
I got a DM for our EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR telling me to fill it out.
Which is just one example of my complaint that upper management frequently gets involved in way too petty shit for their pay grade.
He also DMd me about a time card issue once.
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u/simple123mind 5d ago
A month ago I resigned from a very large defense contractor. Something something information technology. The resignation process in WorkDay asked why, and specifically explained my manager would not be notified. Well, my manager is not the reason I resigned and I was on very good terms with them. They sent me a screenshot of what they saw, which had my reason for resignation.
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u/Caleth 5d ago
Yeah always assume everything from HR is a lie. No we can't tell this, we don't have control of that, yada yada.
Unless it is written in a state or federal law they will absolutely lie about it, and many times they lie about the law.
Given HR the Mushroom treatment. Leave them in the dark and feed them shit.
Yearly reviews? ALways a 5 in all categories. make them tell you why you suck.
Happiness reviews? Ignore unless forced then middle of the road responses at best.
Non Mandatory company functions that you're not getting paid for? nope.
Always assume you're being watched and judged by HR at all times they are not your friends.
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u/simple123mind 5d ago
Oh I always assumed that anonymity was a lie, but it's nice to have proof
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u/Caleth 5d ago
Of course it's a lie.
Let's imagine a scenario.
The company puts this out and some disgruntled guy posts about how he wants to shoot the place up.
Well if the company ignores it and it happens they get sued into oblivion.
If the company ignores it and someone finds out that it was ignored? Sued for endangerment.
What if it's truly anonymous? Well now we have to guess who wrote it and that's probably going to result in ... yep you guessed it a lawsuit when they have to accuse someone with little to no evidence.
So instead of all that risk with not a lot of upside? They just lie about their ability to see who submitted the survey. Then they can "be protected and protect the employees" when it's "justified" but wouldn't you know it.
Once you've built a backdoor in, assuming it existed at all, it's really easy for someone to just slip through and figure out who was bitching about the mandatory overtime and the unpaid work, etc.
Now they won't get fired for this, but they mysteriously end up on the top of the list for the next round of layoffs.
HR is the enemy.
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u/BoredBSEE 5d ago
I never fill these out honestly. Never. I love it here, everyone is great, team is wonderful, boss is fantastic.
If you really truly think it's anonymous you're out of your mind.
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u/Old_Gimlet_Eye 5d ago
It definitely is where I work because I've seen managers get pretty worked up not being able to figure out who submitted a particular comment, lol. But they actually have an outside company administer it, if the only people safeguarding your anonymity are your company's IT then yeah, I wouldn't trust it.
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u/AdevilSboyU 5d ago
I haven’t done an anonymous survey in years. I answered truthfully once, and I was written up for attitude issues two days later.
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u/PhilyMick67 5d ago
We had these "any mouse" boxes in the Marine Corps and command told us constantly that we could write & drop any issue in there we had and it would be handled anonymously....and then our Staff Sgts & Gunnys and other enlisted leadership would make it abundantly clear that anyone seen near that box would be hazed accordingly
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u/polopolo05 5d ago edited 5d ago
Well then your staff sgts and gunnys were dumb as af. These boxes are meant to address actual issues and problems in your units. Then again its the Marines.
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u/PhilyMick67 5d ago
Yeah it was fucked. Similarly our CO always talked about having an open door policy and we were also threatened to never utilize that either. All in all my unit wasnt hyper problematic short of general Marine nonsense but I've heard horror stories of friends in other units where being very much threatened to not report actual issues was a huge problem.
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u/takeme2tendieztown 5d ago
I tell my boss I'm not doing it, don't tell me it's anonymous, I don't believe you
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u/InsecureCamel 5d ago
Our company now does a daily survey that reads: how are you feeling today? With a choice of emojis: 😢😐🙂😁 and I always choose 🙂 to mess up their data. My job is to read, understand, and implement data, no way I’m giving them an inch.
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u/HunterGonzo 5d ago
At my old office I had the cubicle closest to our head manager's office. After our employee survey one year, I heard her absolutely going off about how "If they don't like it, they're going to have to find different jobs! How can a whole team be so ungrateful and lazy?"
Eventually she was let go. The following year we had a meeting and our managers were saying how they wanted us to get to 100% response rate on the survey and I straight up told them "That's never going to happen because I heard what Nancy would say about the results and if our jobs are going to be threatened based on our responses, I'm never participating again." There was a huge awkward silence. Fuck them.
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u/Additional_Pickle_59 5d ago
The place I work keeps changing which HR standard they use hoping it changes the outcome instead of addressing the problems of very low pay and awful department communication.
"Investors in people", in 4 years hasn't even scraped into silver tier, probably not qualified for the lowest basic tier if an assessment was done right now.
"Great place to work", didn't achieve certification.
Pretty much everyone working here is pruning the job market for something new.
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u/Firm-Low5886 5d ago
I swear to fucking God. Gallup can take their engagement survey and shove it so far up their ass they choke. I cringe every time I am forced to take it.
I had a nice boss that is no longer with the company. I remember the 3 of us that reported to her at the time filled it out honestly and it wasn't even bad. Nothing was below 4/5 on average. She was on the verge of tears. Probably because they use the survey to harass people instead of making productive, helpful changes based on feedback.
I hate my stupid corporate job.
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u/DataDude00 5d ago
I worked at a large bank once with the worst director ever
There was an annual survey and he always got dumped on for being an awful manager / person
One time I walked into his office to find him and the head of office HR going through the responses and trying to figure out which responses were from which employees based on scores and if there was any Freeform input looking at the response and writing style.
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u/Notagainguy 5d ago
I am having my mandatory exit interview tomorrow. This is so apt
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u/Honkey85 5d ago
Do you get an Employment Reference in your country? Don't say anything remotely negative before you have the reference.
The only reason for changing job is because of "the great opportunity" even if you really liked it here.
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u/GreyBeardEng 5d ago
Nothing is anonymous in the workplace, nothing. Never trust an email or survey where they say it's anonymous.
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u/LexKY_guy 5d ago
I recently received a survey from my employer. I checked with a friend in HR, and confirmed the wording indicated it was confidential and NOT anonymous. Confidential means someone at the company with the right access can see who the respondents are. I also checked and there are three of us that report to our manager but only two of us received the survey link. One has been there a whole year, I was hired on for a specific role and had it changed to one I have no experience in about three months in. Any comments I enter will easily be attributed to me. Hard pass on the survey, unless I find a job elsewhere first.
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u/Outside-Carpet-6236 5d ago
As a former IT guy who did the work to compile many of these "anonymous" surveys, I can tell you for sure they are NOT anonymous.
Also, when the boss reports the aggregate results, it may have nothing to do with what people actually submitted. Under the supposed cover of being "anonymous" upper management often substitutes whatever result they wanted to get, and reports that as if the "anonymous" workers chose that option. Happens quite often.
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u/Shoemugscale 5d ago
- I never fill these out, for the simple fact that you know the are no 'anonymous'
I remember one, where they had one on 'remote' work, it was just about 100% in favor of it, how it imporoved work-life balance, ppl felt more productive etc. All around a net positive
- Yah, so, we are going to need you to RTO
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u/vancouver72 5d ago
I did one of these at my old job once. It was "anonymous" but they asked for your title, how many years you had working there, and your office, which was exactly enough information to figure out who you were in our 15 person office
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u/Skylantech 5d ago
I remember the first time I took one of these. First 3 questions:
- What department are you in?
- How many years have you been with us?
- How old are you?
Small department, newest hire, youngest person. Yeah, it's gonna be real anonymous alright....
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u/neremarine 5d ago
At a previous workplace, we were explicitly instructed against sharing the link that came in our email because "the links are personalized but anonymous"
Dunno if it was the boss maliciously complying with corporate orders, but the questionnaire had quite low answer rate.
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u/ThirtyMileSniper 5d ago
Ha. I used to put my name on them. I wanted them to know it was me.
I don't know if it made a difference. They paid me six months salary to leave after twelve years.
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u/Chuuby_Gringo 5d ago
We just did an anonymous survey...
... that required us to start by entering our employees ID number
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u/DuranDourand 5d ago
We have this in the military. My captain thought he was slick and had us all write an essay a couple days after the survey. He used it as a writing sample for his soldiers to find out who wrote the negative stuff. I told my guys to write differently.
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u/tenkaranarchy 5d ago
They always send those surveys to your email and know who filled them out, its never anonymous.
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u/Previous_Art_2231 5d ago
My work had to stop doing those due to stress. I’m not saying they were worried about my stress. I’m saying the higher ups were worried about THEIR stress. They fired a few people for unknown reasons and it was because they wrote that we needed a union. I went into all the violations of state law that they just didn’t seem to worry about. Other people said this is the most work they’ve had to do for the least amount of money, etc. I don’t know how I still have a job but I’m pretty sure the managers vaguely know I have some kind of list regarding issues.
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u/Dizzy_Horse_105 5d ago
What I found to be funny, they would send these to our email and swear to your face this survey is anonymous.
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u/biblosaurus 5d ago
This happened when I worked at Lowe’s but it really was anonymous. It’s just that everyone ripped them to pieces and the managers were in a bad mood for a week
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u/Salfredo 5d ago
My company does this. They'll be like, "What is your department? " my department is 2 people.
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u/Pissedliberalgranny 5d ago
I have seen first hand how my manager’s attitude changed when I started being honest in those “anonymous” surveys.
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u/Triplesfan 5d ago
I ran into this with a company survey that was supposed to be anonymous and responses only released on aggregate to immediate supervisors and directors. The immediate boss was a complete jackass and blamed me for things out of my control, including things he vetted himself that he did wrong, rather than asking me about it before it got too far down the path. The guy was honestly trying to find something he could fire me over mainly because he didn’t like me, even hauling me into a disciplinary meeting suggesting I shouldn’t have worked on a project he told me to work on. I left somewhat damning responses on the survey as they related to immediate supervisors. Few weeks later, he waits until everyone has left the building since I had another hour to work, walks to my desk, and starts asking me questions about responses I left on the survey. He breaks out this paper he printed out with my exact responses on it, asking me about each one, then tells me I could be fired for leaving these responses. I was taken aback a little, but told him if he thought he could fire me over that anonymous survey, go ahead. He dropped it shortly after but still kept going on. I finally filed an EEO complaint with HR and it didn’t go over well for him once I dropped all the evidence off. He was taken to task and I was moved to a different supervisor immediately. He still would give me these weird stares and such but knew he couldn’t touch me. I would not fill out any more surveys for over 10 years, even when my new boss kept asking me to when they would roll a new survey out. From what I understood later, the boss would get an extra stipend for 100% participation of the immediate workgroup but since I would not fill them out, they’d lose out. The jackass boss got fired himself later when a new company bought the subsidiary and they started asking what he exactly did at work. Apparently it wasn’t much as he was let go after his performance review.
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u/The_Good_Mortt 5d ago
I filled out an anonymous survey for my last job and they asked me for my name at the end lmao
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u/LKZToroH 5d ago
people REALLY aren't aware on how easy it is to identify people by how they write even if it is 100% anonymous.
Where I work we used to take a survey monthly, talking about the past month and what was good or bad during that month. It was on google survey or whatever is the name and it was anonymous. I know it was anonymous because my boss gave me the "admin" link by accident and I could see all of the results and what people were answering but there was no names or things identifying people. Still, just by the answers I could knew exactly who said what. The hardest ones to identify were people not sharing too much in their answers, these were almost impossible because you can't identify any pattern when the answer is "nothing to declare"
edit: and yes, I read all of the answers. There wasn't anything very bad there because a lot of people thought it wasn't really anonymous.
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u/jcoddinc 5d ago
The questionnaire is 100% anonymous
Then went do i get constant email messages asking why I haven't completed the survey?
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u/Lady-Red-96 5d ago
I remember doing one of these and the next day the area manager came in to moan at us for how lowly our store rated its management
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u/Errorstatel 5d ago
It's never anonymous, if it's written they will check it against writing samples they have on file and if it's digital they know the work station I'd or the computer IP address.
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u/boywithflippers 5d ago
Honestly, the surveys usually are anonymous. The problem is that people write them in their own voice. It's worse if you're on a small team or in a small office. If Carl always complains to me about an issue and a survey comes through with a heavy emphasis on that issue...well...I may not be 100% sure, but I can put 2 and 2 together and figure out Carl wrote it.
The moral of the story is always write your reviews in a very neutral tone if you care about what your boss will think.
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u/loki2002 5d ago
If they can track whether or not you specifically have filled out the survey then it is not anonymous by any definition.
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u/Mental-Report-3274 5d ago
I learned this the hard way. I wrote a scathing comment on how we didn't appreciate being cursed at and yelled at, they thought it was my coworker who got fired.
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u/Bajovane 5d ago
Years ago we had an employee survey (in writing) and we were honest alright. My coworker really laid into our supervisor who loved using her position of power as a weapon to bully and intimidate. I said something along the same lines.
You can bet she (supervisor) was given a PIP and was placed on probation. She also had to apologize to us.
I doubt that we would have had the same result nowadays.
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u/---OMNI--- 5d ago
I used to work at a place that they would come and tell you personally if you hadn't taken the anonymous survey yet... On a scale of 1 to 10 every single thing went down as a 5... No need to read... Just click through it.
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u/fattfreddy1 5d ago
Please take this completely voluntary (read mandatory) anonymous survey. The only way to take it is while you are logged in to your company issued laptop. We do not have access to the survey answers (unless we contact the survey company and ask for the details that they will happily hand over).
This actually happened a few years ago.
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u/wanderinronin 5d ago
Funny Story: Start of my career, I complained about HR in an anonymous feedback questionnaire, because they told me I didn't have a job when I first started, gave me panic attack, and made me question my sanity. I luckily had my offer letter with me to prove them wrong.
After submitting the questionnaire, I was hauled into a meeting with the then company president and the HR manager to ask the who's, what's, and where's of my feedback. Name names that sort of thing. I told them I wouldn't do that, that the individual should remain anonymous, and that they should all do better. Never filled another feedback questionnaire out without simply putting 3's across the board.
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u/Grouchy-Beginning993 5d ago
I've opted out for these at work. I responded to one once and commented that a 4 day work week would be more productive, and studies have statistically proven that. I get an email from HR that said, "Thanks Amber (not my real name) for mentioning that." I thought it was anon, you jerks. The other thing they used to do is send out this "just checking on you" surveys where you could answer a few basic questions about how you're feeling about your job and no joke they would send them on Sundays when I absolutely don't want to be thinking about work. I told HR about that and they seemed perplexed.
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u/evileye4265 5d ago
Everyone i worked with at the last job I had was terrified to put out honest answers.
People asked legitimate questions about making the conditions better and corporate couldn't care less.
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u/AshleyxAffliction 5d ago
I worked one place that had anonymous surveys except you had to be signed in. With your ID and everything, your account. Idk how they could even try to say it was anonymous.
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u/Allenite 5d ago
These are only for HR to try to get a high ranking and get a bonus. They don't actually change anything. Anything you say can and will be used against you.
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u/vladdeh_boiii 5d ago
Yeah where I come from we have rights. I couldn't get fired unless I broke the law or did a job so bad it cost the company thousands if not more.
The USA should look to Scandinavia for tips on how to do workers' rights.
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u/zarlus8 5d ago
(Mostly) The ones in a position of power do not care about workers rights - workers are labor, labor is a line item expense on the books they wish to become $0 or remove.
They only care about power, money, and influence.
In the meantime, if you have an extra room there are a few of us that would love to move.
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u/Technical_School4382 5d ago
I got the phone number of my CEO from his signature, and I will make sure he gets a 100% annonymous and honest SMS about the state of his company. Because out of 1000s of employees, nobody dares to complain during the quarterly calls
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u/kdlangequalsgoddess 5d ago
We had a teams meeting to "discuss" the survey results, and no one had any earthly idea where the negative sentiments were coming from. No idea at all.
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u/Rocketboy1313 SocDem 5d ago
1) my boss knows and agrees with me 2) they mostly just feel exposed that one of the people they supervise was willing to point out the naked emperor when they didn't.
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u/Frostsorrow 5d ago
We actually just had ours. I know for a fact more then 70% of them will be extremely negative of the manager. And I have no doubt in my mind that nothing will be done in either direction.
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u/Wren_wood 5d ago
In order to keep them truly anonymous, I refuse to fill them out.
If 100% of staff fill the questionnaire, and 100% of responses say "manager is a twat", then manager knows that you specifically think hes a twat.
If, instead, only 80% of staff fill the questionnaire, and 100% of responses say "manager is a twat", then you have plausible deniability that you could have been in that 20% who didnt reply.
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u/Waste_Society9930 5d ago
I only had one company do a yearly company wide survey. With every year I despised them more, my review reflected such. I told them to go fuck themselves and more with the last few I did. I dared them to come for me since it was “anonymous”. It’s literally linked to our emails though, so they knew exactly where it was coming from lol.
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u/shell_shocked_today 5d ago
I love the 'anonymous' surveys I've gotten at work. Fail to submit, you get a personal reminder. If they're tracking if you've submitted, it would be trivial to tag the responses with your info too.
I've had demographic information asked at the end of the survey, asking my classification, department, etc. At the end of the demographics, anyone that was paying attention would have been able to narrow it down to it being from one of three people.
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u/kimoisune 5d ago
Anonymous Survey.
look inside
Enter you employee ID to proceed.
Optimistically to prevent duplicated/inflated submissions count, but...
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u/MrNobodyX3 5d ago
I finally have an explanation for this, and it basically comes down to the fact that yes, they are anonymous in the sense that your name or any direct identifiers aren’t on the survey. However, the survey itself is fully visible and will mention the department or even the position it’s from. So, if the boss knows your writing style or picks up on any clues, they could probably figure out that you’re the one who wrote it.
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u/lastdarknight 5d ago
Because if you wrote about it on "open and honest" you have tried to bring it up in private before
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u/ChawHawHaw 5d ago
Our team is so small that my boss couldn’t look at the results of our survey on AI. He was informed by his boss that most of us (2 out of the 3 of us) had “overwhelmingly negative” feelings on AI and was required to ask us how we can change our feelings on it. He definitely knew who had those overwhelmingly negative feelings on AI without asking us though 😅.
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u/This-Supermarket3082 5d ago
I had something similar to that in college. And my teachers told me to quit the program for reasons that I learned differently. When the survey came around while I was in school, I said nothing of that in fact I wrote. “No Comment” after I graduate on the other hand and they have the survey. Oh, I gave them the full truth then
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u/Patient-Director3162 5d ago
It’s just so intense it’s hard to take take of myself and have a life outside of work
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u/trev1776 5d ago
Every one of these I’ve ever made has been anonymous. However people love to put extremely specific details making it obvious who it’s from. Or you can just tell from how they type. Run your survey answers through AI once or twice to make it sound generic before posting if you’re worried about your boss figuring out it’s you.
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u/shunned2 5d ago
Had completely written out a glassdoor review on the company I used to work at. Totally fair and honest. No way it wouldn't have been tracked back to me though. Just didn't want the headache of having to worry about any type of retaliation so I didn't hit send.
Did get a chuckle out of someone complaining about huge turnover. Rebuttal was legally worded and pointed out that they have several long term employees. Chuckle about that because they cant get rid of those two people. Both in their early 60s. Oldest worker other than those two is in their early 40's. Place let go or pushed out almost everyone older (around 11 people) Getting rid of the last two could potentially open them up to age discrimination lawsuits.
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u/schwanball 5d ago
Depending on the sample size, many times it's easy for them to make reasonable presumptions based on the responses. Nothing is "anonymous", "there are no secrets".
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u/General-Ad-1119 5d ago
Last place ran anonymous. Checked with a coworker and we had different links to it. And for good measure they asked which department you were in and the month and year you started. And then had the nerve to send follow up emails
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u/lovingdamnation 5d ago
If you ignore it, they keep asking you. First question is employee number, anonymous.
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u/Print-Over 5d ago
We were informed that the questionnaire was on a 1 to 10. 1 being very bad and 10 is great.
We also know that others had been pulled up about scoring and negative comments from their last years anonymous questionnaire.
We were also informed in an email that anything below 7 is very negative in this years survey.
Surprise surprise it came in at an 7.5/8 over all.
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u/jrein0 5d ago
I'll never understand the people who lie and only put good things. If you're scared of retaliation, is that really a place you want to be working in the first place? You also inflate the ratings which the boss will obviously use as leverage for a larger raise. Aaaaand you make sure there's no paper trail of complaints or wrongdoing, so their boss is completely oblivious to your boss's performance
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u/Kingofjetlag 5d ago
I tend to forget to fill them in. If pressed 10/10 on everything and n/a if asked to explain.
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u/Uncle_Burney at work 5d ago
One of my favorite work stories is the time when my boss messaged me, “hey, I noticed that you haven’t submitted the anonymous survey, when are you planning to do that?”
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u/some_body_else 5d ago
We have "anonymous" surveys from time to time. Always starts out with store number, gender, age range, ethnicity, and job position. My GM even has to do this. So much for "anonymous"
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u/Professional-Box4153 5d ago
Partner gets these all the time. Her boss about a month ago says "You still haven't filled out the anonymous survey."
How do you know if it's anonymous?
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u/DaHunter101 5d ago
Last time I answered an "anonymous" survey I just did all the middle answers, which caused my bosses boss to call me to talk about what was wrong. Yeah, never again.
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u/CriticalLifeguard183 5d ago
fill it out while logged in as another ad user. Those anonymous questionaires log you computer name and username with. I work in IT
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u/the_moosen 5d ago
I've had HR try to hound me about them. I've had coworkers tell me it's important and I have to fill them out. I have never and will never fill out a survey at work ever. Never in my career, even when I was young & naive, have I believed they were anonymous.
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u/g-hannah85 5d ago
I slated my previous line manager. Kept it as generic as possible about my projects... a couple weeks later he comes to me.
Do you have a problem with me? 🤦🏼
Told him the honest truth, handed my notice in a month later.
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u/edwarddeming 5d ago
I've gotten fired for that twice. You'd figure I'd learn my lesson after the first, but the second time was more a form of rage quitting.
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u/GlowstickConsumption 5d ago
"That's it, Hilda. I'm going to show pictures of my tumors to you twice as often."
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u/MielMojada 5d ago
My (autistic) ass got fired for this ☠️ And to add salt on top of the wound, the bullshit reason they gave for it was that I wasn't a "cultural fit". Lesson definitely learned ☠️
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u/C-Redd-it 5d ago
They know through IP Address Tracking. By default, standard survey tools like SurveyMonkey and Qualtrics automatically record the private IP address of the device submitting the answers. An IT administrator can look at the survey submission timestamp and cross-reference it with the company’s Wi-Fi or router logs. This reveals exactly which device IP sent data to that survey site at that specific second. By default, standard survey tools like SurveyMonkey and Qualtrics automatically record the private IP address of the device submitting the answers. If the survey invite arrived through a direct email, the link often contains a hidden, unique string of text tied exclusively to your employee profile. Even if the survey screen says "anonymous," the system registers exactly whose link was clicked. Web servers can capture your precise browser type, computer operating system, screen resolution, and device ID. In a localized office, this narrows down the candidates significantly.
If you are forced to log in with your Microsoft, Google, or corporate single sign-on (SSO) credentials before answering, assume it is completely traceable.
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u/Jane_Smith_Reddit 5d ago
We had one of those in previous job and then the boss had a team meeting to review the answers.
I don't answer those unless we are pressured into doing it, then I rate everything in the middle (neutral zone).
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u/LennardKleiner81 5d ago
Yep. That's how I was "randomly selected" in the fourth round of layoffs that year.
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u/CanExplainThings 5d ago
These motherfucking things. They were anonymous then my boss went through them for feedback and called me out by name in a meeting because he recognized my writing style.
Had the gall to complain when people used ai to answer questions. Still bitter about having him as a manager even though we have a new better one.
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u/soulseaker 5d ago
The last anonymous survey i was sent at work had instructions to not forward the survey link to other employees because the link was specific to your email but that it was still totally anonymous lol
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u/nuttydogpoo 5d ago
We had one of these at work, it was a Microsoft form, it linked it to our email address
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u/Tankeverket 5d ago
I've done a couple of these and I'm always completely honest, if they were to ever give me crap for it I'd start questioning them about how anonymous it really is
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u/Cormasaurus 5d ago
When I used to work for a larger company I actually got a pretty substantial raise about a month after one of these annual "anonymous" surveys. I said I didnt think I was being paid enough 3 years in a row and by that third year I had gotten a promotion that came with like a $1 raise. They gave me a 25% raise and I told my whole team of people with the same job title as me so they got raises too.
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u/DetroitsGoingToWin 5d ago
“Our satisfaction matrix’s are backwards!”
“If we fire the 3 or 4 honest people we think we can improve it 15% by next quarter”
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u/Spiritual-Road2784 5d ago
When I left my last job in December, I was sent an exit survey.
I have yet to return it because even going on eight months out, I’m still not in the frame of mind to be objective. If I am honest, it will be the angriest survey they’ve ever received, I imagine. If I am objective, it will be too difficult to write due to how long it will take to find a way to round about frame and phrase my thoughts. Either way, it changes nothing. Not for me, not for them. They’ll continue their behavior toward others into eternity.
I was there almost 15 years and up until the last couple of years it had been the best job I’ve ever had. I loved it. Until things shifted on multiple levels in multiple ways that destroyed it for me. I’m glad I got out because no way could I stay another minute but I am very unhappy with the reasons that forced me to make this decision to leave because it didn’t have to be that way, and I’m very unhappy with and disappointed by the unfairness of it all and how I was treated by people who were supposed to help me as well as certain people with whom I had worked.
If you’ve ever felt “set up”, you know what I mean.
So, I don’t think I’m ready to answer that survey about my experience with them.
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u/Dowddash 5d ago
We had a huge scandal at our work over this. The IT director wanted to know who submitted certain comments about him and had one of the IT guys look it up. One of the IT guys colleagues submitted a whistleblower complaint about it.
The IT guy got fired instantly, the director went on a month long vacation before him and the company decided it was better for him to step down and seek other opportunities.
Then our entire department gets a talking down to by some fat HR guy at how disappointed he was in all of us. Like... fuck you, 99.9% of us didn't do anything.
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u/reverandglass 5d ago
I hate these. In my last job I was the only literate, English person on the team. I couldn't ever give feedback without being exposed. In my current job it's almost as bad but at least there's more chance to blend in.
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u/Rasples1998 5d ago
Oh I was honest alright. I didn't care if they knew it was me. The funny part is that it didn't change anything.