In response to an agency-wide survey that showed low morale among employees, management administered a follow-up survey to just the folks in my program to elicit more specific feedback. There were a number of open-ended questions that allowed respondents to enter text comments, and several questions about supervisors and communication and other potential contributors to low morale.
The survey, as is typical of these kinds of things, was anonymous. Because no one would be honest if they thought their answers could be traced back to them, right?
Well, today management released the results of the survey via email. Not just the aggregated responses to the multiple-choice questions, but also the individual free-text comments. No names were identified in the comments and they were anonymously presented, but many of them contained revealing details. And some people expressed themselves very frankly and passionately.
And now I feel stupid for filling out the survey. While I didn’t submit anything that was malicious, untrue, or unprofessional, my feedback was not glowing and I spoke my mind regarding the limitations of my supervisor. Why? Because the question was asked and I had no idea she would see it! Odds are she will know my comment was in reference to her, even if she doesn’t know it came from me (and she might guess that it did based on how I write). If I’d known upfront my answers would be disseminated for the whole world to see, I would have not been as candid. I would have joined the 44% of the office who were non-respondents.
It is possible everyone else who completed the survey feels bamboozled and led astray like me, which is hilariously ironic given the distrust we have with upper management. What do you say? Am I overreacting or do you think this action by my management is as fucked up as I think it is?
We have such surveys, along with a checkbox that asks if we would like to share our (anonymous) comments publicly, with the assurance that no names will be used. IOW, you have to actively check that box or your comments will remain completely private.
A co-worker did this once.
He was new. He requested meetings with a number of people to ask how the company worked, how our various teams interacted with his team and specifically his new position, what were some of the company’s various strengths and weaknesses, etc. A number of new co-workers had done this type of thing, I didn’t think anything of it. This twit then sent a company wide email with everyone’s answers to his questions. It was a completely shitty thing to do. It also showed that he was a tone deaf moron with piss poor listening skills (there were a lot of misquotes); it very much lowered the way people thought of him.
Management doing that in a company with morale problems is probably indicative of the kinds of bad decisions that lowered morale in the first place.
I don’t even understand what value there is in publicizing the comments. It’s not like staff is suffering in monk-like silence. We exchange complaints with each other all the time. That’s what gossip is for. Putting this stuff out there seems to serve only one purpose. Make everyone paranoid and embarassed so that the next time this survey is administered no one will participate for fear of this happening again.
We’re supposed to have an All Hands meeting to talk about the survey next month. What would be sweet is if everyone called in sick that day.
Unless they warned ahead of time that all the comments would be made public, which I assume was not the case, yeah, that’s pretty messed up. When you drop a card in a comment box, you don’t expect it to display on a giant screen on the wall next to you.
Just a thought - maybe you should send a truly anonymous note to management (as in carefully sanitized of any specifics that might give management and co-workers ideas of who the author or his department might be) explaining that they violated anonymity by doing what they did and made it very much less likely anyone will honestly fill in any other “anonymous” survey.
Which would be pretty useless unless some of the comments were cleaned up by HR and shown to the appropriate managers. Which would probably take too long. I’ve sat in on management meetings reviewing surveys, but not many people talked about specific managers.
Releasing it publicly is truly stupid, though.
My current company doesn’t care enough about what people think to even do one.
I would never fill in a work related survey and assume anonymity! Of course they can link your responses to you. I never put in writing on a work system anything I wouldn’t be willing to say out aloud.
Well, the comments were in addition to multiple choice answers. What I assumed would happen is that the aggregated results would be shared with the managers as is, while the comments would be communicated to them in a somewhat sanitized and smoothed over summary. Just so they could get the overall gist of what staff’s gripes were. That has been my practice when I’ve administered surveys to large groups. It would never occur to me to send out results in raw data form.
Few large enterprises concern themselves overmuch with issues of staff morale. It’s the kind of thing that waxes and wanes over time and economic ups and down. A c-level executive couldn’t give a rat’s ass if some rank and file employee is personally satisfied with his/her job. Why should they? Executive salaries and bonuses are not measured by employee satisfaction survey results. The smart ones, don’t even open that can of worms.
But there are some HR executives who are foolish enough to try to address these “concerns”. Almost without exception this is to pay lip service to the problem and because some CEO and COO told them to “fix it” - meaning: make it go away. So off they fuck to “fix it”, thinking that if they are perceived to be doing something about morale then that’s as good as actually doing something about it. When in fact, nothing can be done because in the eyes of most rank and file employees, management can do no right. Why? Because quite simply, goals of senior management and employees are rarely, if ever, aligned.
So my impression of the actions described in the OP is that it’s just a cynical attempt by some hapless HR exec who’s been tasked with improving office morale to do just that. And since no actual change in priorities or corporate practices is likely to take place to improve flagging morale, some surveys and parroting back of results is the most expedient way for senior management to respond at little to no cost and most importantly, with little to no change to their list of priorities; the least of which is employee morale.
I once worked for a smallish company that had a suggestion/complaint box. Once a month at the company-wide meeting, the CEO would empty out the complaint box and read each one aloud to the entire company, with no screening beforehand. After a couple months of embarrassingly petty complaints, he finally stopped. I was so tempted to put in one of my own, but the company soon went out of business. Coincidence?
I worked for a nonprofit with the same sort of box. At our monthly admin meetings, the managers would gather and read the suggestions. About 10% of the time was taken up with considering suggestions seriously and respectfully; the other 90% of the time was taken trying to guess who put in the suggestion and talking smack about them. I was less than thrilled.
What everyone else says - there is no upside to filling out these kinds of surveys. So I don’t.
If management says generically to everyone “we want everyone to participate” I ignore it. If they ask me specifically if I have filled it out, I ask if it is anonymous. If they say Yes, I say I can’t fill it out because it won’t be anonymous if it comes from my e-mail address.
If they say something that implies that they know that I haven’t filled it out, I know they are lying about it’s being anonymous (and that did happen once). In that case, or if it is stated or implied that my filling out the form is part of my duties as an employee, I fill it out, and select the middle option on everything, and never add any comments of any sort.
IME 90% of the time the company in question, either wants to be told how great they are doing, or else that the problems can be addressed in some way that doesn’t involve changing anything. In neither case will my feedback do any good.