Employee surveys must be anonymous. Right?

Anonymity – A double-edged sword

Anonymity is often considered essential in employee surveys. The idea behind it: only those who don’t fear negative consequences will give honest feedback.

But a closer look reveals that anonymity not only raises fundamental questions but often creates more problems than it solves.

Because anonymous employee surveys come with significant drawbacks:¹

• “Kill the messenger”: An anonymous survey implicitly signals that speaking openly is risky and that feedback providers need protection.
• “Witch hunt”: People try to identify the authors of negative comments, often leading to innocent team members being blamed for statements they never made.
• Venting frustration: Anonymity encourages people to let off steam or exaggerate. In our experience, such feedback rarely leads to meaningful improvements.

Anonymous employee surveys are somewhat reminiscent of WikiLeaks—a platform for exposing unethical behavior where whistleblowers must remain anonymous to protect themselves. But is an employee survey really the right place for such escalations?

While these cases matter, they represent only a small fraction of the challenges an organisation faces. Is it worth fostering a culture of mistrust and fear just to address these few instances? And shouldn’t these issues be handled through other channels anyway?

The advantage of transparency

Employee surveys should function more like Wikipedia—an open platform where everyone shares knowledge and experiences to learn from each other and move forward together.

Transparency is…

• A catalyst for constructive feedback: Knowing that others can see who provided the feedback encourages people to choose their words carefully, leading to more constructive input.
• The foundation for meaningful conversations: Only transparent feedback can spark productive discussions and, ultimately, real improvements.
• Equal rights for all: Employees and managers alike have access to feedback. This prevents power imbalances where certain groups control information to gain influence.

Wouldn’t that be far more effective than blindly clinging to the sacred cow of anonymity?

Meaningful improvements happen when everyone engages with feedback

Employee surveys should drive change. But simply knowing the results isn’t enough—understanding the context is key. What are the underlying causes? What actions make sense?

Teams often have better insights than HR or management. To make real improvements, feedback must be accessible to everyone in the organisation—in a format that fosters real discussions.

Transparency doesn’t mean full disclosure

However, the sacred cow doesn’t have to be completely sacrificed. Cross-team learning from feedback is possible without full transparency. In other words, some things should be visible, while others should remain private.

Our approach is simple:

• Ratings remain anonymous and are displayed as team scores.
• Comments are visible to everyone, but names are only shown within the respective teams.

This enables company-wide learning, productive team discussions, and a reasonable level of privacy. Years of experience have shown us: this balanced approach works best.

Conclusion: change takes courage

Organisations across industries—from banks and insurance companies to public institutions and SMEs—have successfully implemented our approach. Despite initial concerns, employees respond with “Finally!” instead of “Not me!”

At our clients’ companies, the sacred cow has made way for a constructive feedback culture—one that continuously improves. Employees participate more frequently, provide longer and more detailed comments, and offer increasingly critical feedback—even as overall satisfaction rises and feedback culture improves.

The success of this approach isn’t just reflected in higher participation rates but, more importantly, in a sustainably improved company culture and more efficient work processes.

Real change requires real dialogue—and that’s only possible with transparency.

References

¹Detert, J. R., & Burris, E. (2016, January/February). Can your employees really speak freely? Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2016/01/can-your-employees-really-speak-freely