Anonymous or nominal survey of employees: when to use each

This is an automatic translation of the Spanish original and may contain errors. Read the original in Spanish

Use an anonymous survey when you care more about sincerity on a sensitive subject than knowing who said what, and a nominal when you need to act on a particular person or follow his response in time. This article is for those who work in Human Resources or internal communication of a medium or large company and have to decide the format before launching a consultation. If you're just going to ask a team of eight people what day you prefer for year-end food, you don't need to decide any of this: ask out loud.

Anonymous, confidential and nominal: what does each record

All three are distinguished by what is kept over who responded.

The survey guides use these words with nuances. QuestionPro defines the anonymous as the one that collects answers without recording anything that links them to a person and the confidential as the one that can link them but promises to maintain that private link, and adds a third, the pseudonym, which changes the names by codes. AhaSlides gives an example of confidential: Human Resources may know who said what and the direct head of the person does not. Before you throw anything, write which of the three you're going to use, with those words, because the staff will understand exactly what you say.

When it's really anonymous

"Anonymous" describes what the tool does and what you do when preparing the survey. Use it as a criterion to evaluate any tool: a survey is anonymous if, with the data that are saved, no one can deduce who responded. Three checks.

No direct identifiers. Buk recommends not to ask for name, mail or other personal data, and in your frequent questions counts the charge among the data you identify. If the survey required to log in, she asked whether the system kept the identity next to the answer.

Shared link, not personal invitations. Stop AhaSlides, to say "this survey is anonymous" is not enough: it suggests explaining that a shared link is used and not custom invitations, because credibility comes from specificity.

Only added results, with a minimum of answers. The guides don't match here. Buk warns that in teams of less than five people anonymity may be compromised, and AhaSlides recommends not to show a segment until you have ten or more answers, because in small groups a written answer with details of your own can tell the person who wrote it. When the minimum falls, Buk proposes to group the results in larger areas instead of publishing those of a two-person team. There is no universal threshold: set yours and check that the tool lets you apply it.

Demographic questions are the usual escape

Every question of department, office, seniority or headquarters seems innocent. Together they identify. The study of Latanya Sweeney with data from the US census. United States of 1990 found that 87% of the population (216 out of 248 million) had characteristics that probably made it unique only with five-digit postcode, gender and date of birth. They are data from another country and another time, and serve as an order of magnitude: with few current attributes, in a small group one person is reached. QuestionPro warns that three ordinary demographic questions can function as a footprint and recommends sections rather than exact ages or antiques. In practice:

1. Just ask the data you're going to use to analyze. If you're not going to compare by headquarters, don't ask.
2. It uses large sections (less than two years, two to five years, more than five years) and offers "I prefer not to say it."
3. Hand-check the written answers before sharing them: a detail like "since the new night shift" can be enough to point to someone.

When each

The short rule of QuestionPro: choose anonymity when honesty weighs more than monitoring, and confidentiality or codes when you need to act on individual cases or follow the same people between one survey and the next. Applied to internal communication tasks:

• Anonymous: relationship with the head, workload, climate, assessment of an organizational change, for example after reporting a restructuring to staff. AhaSlides list as sensitive issues the effectiveness of the leadership, psychological security and wage equity, and adds that on issues without charge, such as valuing an event, anonymity matters less.
• Confidential or code: a consultation you repeat every quarter to see how the same person evolves, or a survey after a training in which Human Resources will then talk to the one who gave a low note.
• Nominal: inscriptions, choice of shifts or dates, confirmation of attendance, and any queries whose answer changes what you do with that person.

A warning about confidentiality: AhaSlides points out that it serves to follow up, but does not give the same frankness as actual anonymity. If you promise confidentiality, be prepared for some of the staff to be created less than an anonymous.

What does the study say about response and sincerity

It is repeated that anonymity increases participation. The study of Ulf-Dietrich Reips, published in Spanish as Internet surveys of employees: concepts and discoveries and hosted by the University of Constanza, does not show it. He invited 655 employees from a section of a large Swiss company to a short questionnaire, with different degrees of anonymity and voluntariness, and responded 318. The most anonymous and more voluntary conditions obtained 31% response, and the less anonymous and less voluntary 58%. As both anonymity and obligation to participate were changed, the figure does not allow to know how much is due to each factor. What he does say is that participation depends on both of us and that a pressure on the person can reduce it.

On sincerity there is a clearer fact in the same study. In the condition of minor anonymity, people declared a higher job satisfaction, and the author interprets it as a socially desirable response: to answer what should be seen by who could identify you. He also pointed out that part of the impression of anonymity depended on an external institution carrying out the survey.

The limits matter: single studyin a department of a company, with questionnaires on paper and web, and anonymity was reduced with moderate measures. Use it as an indication that identifying the responder changes the responder. None of his figures can be transferred to your company.

How to communicate it to staff

The staff decides how much they trust anonymity before they respond, so what you count weighs as much as what you set up. Say it before sending, in the same message as the survey:

1. What kind is it?with the words of the table above.
2. What is kept and what is not. For example, "we do not ask for name or mail, and the link is the same for all people."
3. Who sees the results and how little. "We only show groups of at least X answers."
4. When and how you're gonna answer. AhaSlides suggests sharing a summary of topics with all participants in the two weeks after the closure.
5. What you're not gonna do. You won't try to find out who wrote every comment.

Don't promise anything the tool doesn't do. If you don't know if you keep the identity next to the answer, ask the person who offers it how it guarantees it, and ask for it in writing before writing "anonymous" in the message to the staff.

What to do with the results

A survey whose findings no one sees teaches staff not to answer the following. Share what you found, choose two or three shares and say which ones you won't be able to do and why. Do it on the same channel where people already read the ads, so that it doesn't depend on someone going into a separate panel. If part of the staff does not have corporate mail, the channels to reach these people are compared in how to communicate to workers who do not have corporate mail.

If the result leads you to change an internal standard, the survey does not replace the acceptance of the new text: request express acceptance and leave it registered. And if the survey is nominal, the list of those who didn't answer is about the one who didn't read an ad: wait for the deadline, check if you could do it and call back on another channel..

What to ask a survey tool

To decide whether a tool will serve you, ask him for these communication and confidence criteria:

• Choose between anonymous and nominal in each survey, and not a single configuration for the entire account.
• Aggregate results, and know what it does with small groups: whether it hides, warns or shows.
• Simple or multiple, to cover both "choose a date" and "mark everything that affects you."
• How it guarantees anonymity: what you keep, who can see what within the company and within the supplier.
• Let him live next to the rest of your communications. An internal communication platform that offers anonymous or nominal surveys along with the ads and agreements lets you announce the consultation and collect the answers on the same site. An external form forces people out of the channel they already use.

This coexistence has a price: an internal communication platform is not a programme of surveys. A simple or multiple survey is sufficient for a timely consultation. If you need to ramify questions, compare with data from other companies or analyze by segment, check that the tool offers it or uses a survey specialist.

When an anonymous survey is the wrong tool

There are four cases.

When you need to act on a person. If someone describes a specific problem and wants to help, respond or investigate, anonymity prevents you from doing it: you cannot ask or accompany who you do not know who it is. What comes out in an anonymous survey does not replace the channel your company defines for complaints and complaints. If a response describes something serious, take the case to that channel and consult with your legal advice, without trying to guess who it is.

When the group is small. With less people than the minimum you set, all disaggregated delata report. Group, or do interviews.

When you can't commit to acting. If the result is not going to change anything, asking about sensitive issues costs confidence. It's better not to launch the survey.

When the answer is a procedure. Registration, attendance or shift elections need a name. An anonymous version only adds work.