It is that time of year again! Many organizations have instituted anonymous employee surveys to determine if there are issues that need to be addressed within the company.
Surveys can assist management by facilitating discussion about feedback that indicates morale issues, productivity concerns, or team incongruity that affects how well business is conducted. It can highlight concerns across various levels within the structure of the company to see if there are concerns at individual offices or company-wide. Then if the process is optimized or redesigned to remedy these issues the company could see improved performance in its industry, reduced recruitment costs, lower brain drain, improve innovation with better engaged and motivated employees, and even achieve recognition as a great workplace. If an organization achieves high recognition from an authority than this will help with customer acquisition and retention as well as with drawing exceptional and highly qualified applicants to staff critical positions within the organization.
This is how this is supposed to work in theory; however, many organizations are just giving lip service to this process. Many surveys are not anonymous and can be used as a tool to weed out people who are not invested in the current direction of the company, disagree with the philosophy of the organization (even if the implementation or the business strategies are just plain wrong), or have concerns about how effective business processes are at accomplishing goals. Instead of wanting to get feedback that provides actionable intelligence to address issues before they turn toxic or worse legal, some companies would rather remove the person who complains instead of addressing the issue.
In business, there are ways to conduct practices in a way that maintains engagement with work for the employee. Some companies have morning stand ups to verbally communicate information and hear what is going on with the employees at the work level or customer level. When major plans are being announced, managers have meetings to discuss the change and get input from the employees. Some companies want input on legitimate grounds to see if there are morale problems or implementation issues with going forward. One example is buy-in by staff and another is not taking into consideration all facets of the job and how a change will affect productivity. While others just want to make employees feel they are part of the process, but the employees have no real say in the decision or the implementation. Management just wants employees to feel good about their leaders and their company because they care enough to ask. This can increase morale but when it is transparently obvious it is not true it produces the opposite effect, is a waste of time, and accomplishes nothing. Surveys that are said to be anonymous, but in fact are not are similar.
Paper surveys with multiple-choice, scan ready, readable bubbles can be anonymous unless the sheets are numbered or labeled with a code that is assigned to a specific employee. These also cost more in wasted effort and can lose effectiveness if employees Christmas Tree the answer key. Survey Monkey and other online surveys do not require paper intake which is good for businesses, but in general, they are not anonymous (bad for the employee). Organizations can determine who the individual is using the IP address, a header that is part of the request, or if the link has a parameter inline identifying the person, cookies, and if the survey was completed from a workplace workstation.
Why offer surveys that are advertised as anonymous when they are not? One reason is awards. Bragging rights between executives over their companies is a powerful incentive for some people. If the company is really concerned about their business and wants to offer a survey, suppressing thoughts outside the group think or from those disengaged because of process or people is a missed opportunity for the company to find out why people do the minimum, leave, or stay and be miserable. Of course some people would take an anonymous survey and use it to insult and troll management but if you are in a position of authority and leadership this is a con but should the company junk surveys because of a few hecklers? (One blog corresponding to an executive with one of the online survey firms explained this when he received insulting reviews from anonymous employees). Being scared about negativity that be submitted employees enough to use identifying characteristics of the process to out and dismiss employees tells you all that you need to know about your organization. If the participation rate is low or if employees lie to protect their jobs, this says a lot about the environment within your company.
Employees are not stupid. Fill out a survey negatively and risk identification is not a good way to stay within the good graces of management. Ignore the survey has its own set of problems so some employees will undoubtedly fill out the survey will positive bias to protect themselves. Is this worth the effort for the employee and the survey sponsor? This sounds like an exercise in futility and wasted productivity for those who use company time to participate in this process.
