Are Employee Pulse Surveys Anonymous?

Pulse surveys are short organizational surveys that are conducted at regular intervals. It is usually carried out on organizational stakeholders like Employees & Customers. In this blog, I maintain Pulse surveys as Employee surveys for discussion convenience.

Have you ever received an email asking to fill out Employee pulse surveys claiming Anonymous? Are you worried thinking if these surveys are truly Anonymous? I understand that going through this process can be a traumatic and stressful experience. It need not be that way always, here is a solution, see the reveal at the end.

Let’s first understand what are the risks involved with Non-anonymous surveys.

Risks of Non-Anonymous Pulse Surveys

Below are 3 main risks of taking Non-anonymous Employee Pulse Surveys. These risks belong to pulse surveys that claim to be anonymous, but in reality are non-anonymous.

1. A Culture of Mistrust

   It creates a sense of mistrust between the employees and employers. Employees are not happy to take surveys which they doubt are not anonymous. This alienates the workforce. It also causes the leadership team to make misguided decisions.

2. Less Actionable Feedback

   It causes bias in the response. The feedback is skewed either way making it less actionable. Employees tend to answer as per management expectations - Social desirability bias. Else they may praise the recent leadership change in the company - Recency bias. Both these biases cease meaningful feedback.

3. Employee fear of reprisal

   Employees fear punitive actions against them for providing honest feedback. Employees can be overlooked for promotions. There are also examples where employees are fired for their honest feedback. I will discuss that real incident in the next section.

Are Pulse surveys really Anonymous?

Here is a real incident

This person worked for a mid-sized technology company with almost 200 employees. One day he received an email from the management asking to fill out the “Company culture survey”. Anonymity of this survey was thoroughly emphasized and employees were encouraged to take the survey without any fear of reprisal. This person also responded honestly to the survey with good intentions. Post taking the survey this person received a call from the company HR. The HR said that his response for the survey signaled negative attitudes towards the company and they wanted to part ways. Eventually this employee was fired from the company for his honest responses to the survey. You can further read the detailed story here.

This does not mean Pulse surveys will be anonymous, however anonymity in Pulse surveys is not guaranteed always.

You can ensure anonymity by choosing the right platform, avoiding PII questions in survey design, testing Anonymity before sharing, communicating compliance & more.

These detailed and careful consideration of tools and methods are required to guarantee anonymity in pulse surveys.

Do you know? BlockSurvey guarantees true Anonymity. Read on. Let’s see how.

BlockSurvey guarantees Anonymity

Below are 3 concrete reasons to prove BlockSurvey provides Anonymity for Pulse surveys.

1. No tracking of data

   BlockSurvey inherently does not track user information. It does not collect IP addresses. There is no silent monitoring of any of the respondent information. It does not run recommended ads. The platform is completely end-to-end encrypted while securing data both at transit & rest.

2. Zero-knowledge

   Unlike centralized applications like SurveyMonkey or JotForm, BlockSurvey stores its data on decentralized nodes. The user data is secured with a secret key and BlockSurvey cannot access respondent data. There is no risk of data breaches.

3. The Anonymous Seal

   Anonymous Seal is a truly defining BlockSurvey feature for maintaining anonymity. You will thank us later for this feature. Just turn on the Anonymous seal option, and BlockSurvey restricts adding any PII (Personally Identifiable Information) related questions in the survey. The anonymity is also conveyed to the respondents by displaying this Anonymous seal in the survey taking screen.

Conclusion

As discussed earlier, the critical role of pulse surveys requires careful consideration of tools and methods. Among umpteen survey tools on the internet, BlockSurvey stands out in guaranteeing Anonymity. BlockSurvey is privacy focused in design. You must try out BlockSurvey’s Anonymous seal feature to experience true anonymity pulse surveys.

With BlockSurvey, taking employee pulse surveys need not be feared anymore. Why not give BlockSurvey a try?. You have reached the right platform to experience anonymous pulse surveys.