On paper, employee surveys are an easy win: Employees get a chance to say what they really think, and you collect valuable data on the employee experience and rates of engagement. But that’s not always the case in real life.
Employees often harbor concerns about who will see their feedback and whether they’ll face repercussions for their comments. Others don’t bother completing the survey because they believe nothing will come from their responses. These common employee concerns make ensuring anonymity and taking action on survey results all the more crucial.
Below, we look more closely at how to design, distribute, and respond to anonymous employee surveys to encourage responses, build trust, and gain invaluable feedback for better decision-making.
What is an anonymous employee survey?
Despite the open-door policies that are often espoused by companies, it’s not always easy to speak up at work. But hearing from employees is essential. “It’s so important to get a beat on what’s happening internally,” said Nadia Eran, a fractional head of people and people ops leader for Series A through C startups.
This is especially true given the overall state of employee engagement in the US. Gallup's July 2024 report showed a small uptick in employee engagement, with 32% of workers feeling fully engaged at work, compared to an 11-year low of 30% in the first quarter of 2024. Regularly surveying employees allows you to get a read on employee engagement and sentiment.
When an employee doesn't have to attach their name to something, you tend to get more from them about how they're feeling.
Since anonymous employee surveys cannot be traced to individual respondents, they’re an effective way to collect honest, frank feedback from your workforce. “When an employee doesn't have to attach their name to something, you tend to get more from them about how they're feeling, what's happening in the workplace, and the challenges they’re experiencing,” said Alana Cheeks-Lomax, cofounder and CEO of Untold, a strategic consulting firm focused on multicultural branding.
Their lack of traceability is what differentiates anonymous surveys from confidential surveys. “Anonymous means you don't know who said what. Confidential means you know who said it, but you're not going to disclose that information,” Eran explained.
Exit interviews and the surveys completed during or after onboarding are an appropriate use of confidential surveys, but other types of surveys are best kept anonymous. Pulse and engagement surveys are commonly anonymous, and they can cover a range of topics including organizational change, work-life balance, compensation and benefits, the employee experience, and more.
Benefits of Anonymous Employee Surveys
Giving employees a forum to share their honest feedback can contribute to psychological safety which is essential to building a thriving and high-performing workplace. By removing fear of reprisal, anonymous surveys create a safe space for unguarded communication, allowing you to collect and act on more accurate and valuable insights.
Unadulterated Responses
“When it's anonymous, people can be more candid. That transparency is what you're looking for. You want to hear what your employees think about leadership, their managers, their experience at work,” said Eran.
One of the great things about an anonymous engagement survey is that you get all the voices.
Anonymity can reduce social desirability bias, the tendency to answer in a way that will be viewed favorably by others. Anonymous surveys also provide a secure platform for discussing sensitive topics — like a toxic workplace culture or a boss showing favoritism. Taken together, this allows organizations to address potential problems before they escalate. “If something is awry, you want to be able to fix it, especially if it's important to you as an organization,” Eran noted.
Broad Perspectives
Since surveys are distributed to all employees, they offer a chance to hear perspectives from everyone rather than just the most vocal. “One of the great things about an anonymous engagement survey is that you get all the voices. Every person gets an equal chance to express themselves,” said Eran.
Improved Employee Experience
Anonymous surveys also help organizations uncover blind spots by creating the potential for honest answers. Employees have unique perspectives on workplace dynamics and challenges that aren’t always visible to folks in HR or management. The feedback they provide during anonymous surveys can bring these insights to light and give leadership an opportunity to address previously unknown problems.
Ultimately, anonymous surveys are a tool to boost engagement and employee satisfaction. When employees feel their voices are heard and their feedback is valued, they're more likely to feel invested in the organization's success, which improves morale and can lead to higher employee retention rates.
Common Challenges of Anonymous Employee Surveys
While anonymous surveys deliver benefits like unvarnished feedback, they also come with challenges.
Responding to Feedback
With anonymous surveys, addressing specific negative feedback isn’t always possible. But there are still ways to follow up. Executives should send a company-wide email thanking employees for their time and feedback, and share top-line learnings from the survey. These can also be addressed during all-hands meetings or company ask-me-anything (AMA) events. And, “If there are specific trends in the data across departments or teams, leaders may work with the HR business partner to find ways to address feedback,” said Cheeks-Lomax.
Confirming Anonymity
Assuring employees their responses are truly anonymous is one of the toughest. Companies can put employees at ease by highlighting the features of the software they use to conduct anonymous surveys, like hiding IP addresses or employing anonymity thresholds.
Lattice allows HR teams to easily customize their anonymity threshold, the minimum number of respondents needed before the scores for a question or theme become visible. While the platform’s default threshold is five users, Lattice protects anonymity by requiring a minimum of three. An anonymity threshold any lower than that could cause survey participants to feel vulnerable and discourage them from answering honestly.
Asking excessive questions can lead to employee survey fatigue, and questions that aren’t acted on can elicit a sense of futility.
Best Practices for Anonymous Employee Surveys
Anonymous surveys offer a chance to collect honest employee feedback on a range of topics, including work environment, onboarding, job satisfaction, and company initiatives.
But if employees doubt their responses are actually anonymous, you can end up with inauthentic feedback or low survey response rates. This makes it all the more critical to create and distribute surveys in a way that truly ensures anonymity and builds trust.
Step 1: Plan the survey thoroughly.
Before you launch your survey, define clear objectives for it. Consider specific insights you hope to gather from the survey data, if any. Decide whether you’ll use a survey template for the questionnaire, ensure all employee data is up to date, and select the employees you’ll invite to participate.
Crucially, consider what you’ll do with what you learn. “The biggest thing about employee engagement surveys is what happens after the survey,” said Cheeks-Lomax. “What happens with a lot of organizations is that the data tends to just sit somewhere after the survey.” This is frustrating for employees and may deepen existing disengagement.
Step 2: Use the right tools for conducting surveys.
Using software to conduct the survey simplifies the design and distribution and makes it easier to organize and interpret the data after the fact. Trusted tools like Lattice go a step further, ensuring data security and anonymity, boosting the potential for honest employee feedback and trust in the process.
Step 3: Craft effective employee survey questions.
Writing good survey questions is key to creating an effective engagement survey, but many miss the mark. You have to not only write good questions, but also ensure they are free of bias and include a mix of question types, like multiple-choice, open-ended, and Likert scale questions. “Most people's thoughts and ideas can't be contained in just a ‘strongly agree’ to a ‘strongly disagree,’ so it’s important to include a variety of question types,” Eran said.
You also have to ensure questions are actionable, Eran pointed out. Asking excessive questions can lead to employee survey fatigue, and questions that aren’t acted on can elicit a sense of futility. “If you got the worst responses on a question, what would you do? If you have no idea, or leadership wouldn't touch it, don't waste time with that question.”
Step 4: Optimize the timing and distribution of the survey.
Employees are busy, so keep surveys short and consider the timing to maximize response rates, i.e., avoid sending out surveys during particularly busy periods, like year-end. Use multiple distribution channels, like email, push notifications from apps or platforms, and reminders from Slack integrations, so employees can access the survey from various touchpoints. Once employee responses are in, it’s time to start analyzing employee engagement survey data.
No matter what, don’t be defensive. You’ll just make employees feel uncomfortable about expressing themselves.
How to Respond to Anonymous Engagement Survey Feedback
Engagement surveys allow you to collect employee feedback and also provide a chance to demonstrate to employees that you’re listening. To do so, you must not only act on the trends in the data but also communicate to employees that you’ve received their anonymous responses.
“At the end, it's about closing the loop: responding to feedback or doing something about it,” said Eran. “It's about consistency in pulling feedback and turning this into a real communication loop that connects all levels of the organization.”
Until recently, the crux of anonymous surveys was the inability to reply to individual comments. But Lattice makes it possible to facilitate that dialogue without compromising privacy. Here’s what to keep in mind when doing so.
1. Don’t get defensive.
Psychological safety is core to surveying. You shouldn’t expect to receive honest feedback if your organization tends to react poorly to it. Before replying to survey feedback, HR leaders recommend weighing your tone — are you coming off as defensive? Ask others on your people team for a second (or third) opinion.
“No matter what, don’t be defensive. You’ll just make employees feel uncomfortable about expressing themselves in future surveys,” said George Santos, managing director and head of marketing at 180 Engineering, a technical recruitment firm. Avoid describing your perspective on the issue if you disagree (or even agree) with what’s been shared. At this stage, focus on intake, acknowledgment, and next steps: “Thank you for your feedback, subject X is important to us, and this is what I’ll commit to doing next.”
Santos explained, “If employees feel confronted, they will regret being honest. Thank people when they express themselves and demonstrate that you are open to working toward solutions.” He added that no matter the issue’s scope, word tends to spread if a manager or HR team comes across as dismissive in a private response.
2. Pull in the right stakeholders.
As an HR professional, you already know to weigh your words carefully. That’s especially true with something as sensitive as survey feedback. Lattice empowers your team to pull in other stakeholders, like managers of managers and senior leadership, to craft the right message.
Still, be mindful of precisely who you decide to loop in. Inexperienced managers and those who might be the subject of the feedback shouldn’t be the ones responding directly. The experts we talked to recommended leaving that to the people team — even if those leaders are part of the behind-the-scenes deliberations.
“The problem starts when someone sees the negative feedback and starts acting chaotically, not knowing what to do next,” said Pamela Utevska, head of HR and operations at Shortlister, an online HR vendor database. Managers may fail to identify what warrants a response, or worse, contest the feedback and try to defend themselves. They may need to be reminded to “focus on the point of the message instead of who said what,” Utevska added.
Depending on the nature of the feedback shared, the feedback-giver may also be mortified to see their direct supervisor respond. Give your people team the last word on messaging and who gets to press “reply.”
3. Ask clarifying questions.
Kris Osborne, former senior vice president of talent at FinanceBuzz, a personal finance company, used employee engagement survey software to respond to anonymous feedback from his team during his time there. In cases where a comment seemed unclear, he didn’t have to infer what the employee meant — he could just ask.
“Anytime someone gives constructive feedback, I can ask follow-up questions and for recommendations, all while keeping the individual anonymous,” Osborne said. For more widespread issues, his team would continue that dialogue by meeting with select leaders or employees.
Afterward, Osborne would discuss with leadership to align on employee sentiment. “We begin by having managers ask their teams about the data during one-on-ones or team meetings. That way we can collect more feedback, but also be transparent about the areas we need to improve,” he said.
Sharing commitments company-wide, while preserving anonymity, also fosters accountability.
4. Set realistic expectations.
Affecting change on systemic issues won’t happen overnight. It’s critical to set expectations around the timeframe for implementing initiatives.
It isn’t enough to simply thank employees for their feedback when bigger issues, like a lack of pay equity or toxic workplace habits, are raised. “Some of these areas require a more systematic and strategic approach to make a lasting and impactful difference,” said Kim Beaver, director of human resources at Shop LC, a home shopping network.
Rather than sharing details on how you’ll implement a solution from start to finish, share your next steps, like meeting with executive leadership, and follow up with more digestible updates. Providing updates on progress and milestones along the way — either as an individual follow-up message or in a company-wide update — will communicate that you haven’t let up on the issue.
5. Address issues broadly when you need to.
If you see the same feedback being shared across multiple departments, it might be time to acknowledge the elephant in the room. While responding to these comments in your engagement survey tool is a helpful start, consider bringing it up in a more public forum, too.
“For concerns around topics that impact the entire company,” Beaver explained, “we ask that leaders address or answer them during our all-hands meetings.” Sharing commitments company-wide, while preserving anonymity, also fosters accountability. “Under this approach, we’ve seen a very positive response from our employees, and better employee survey results for feelings of being heard, appreciated, and validated for voicing questions or concerns.”
Doing so also sends a powerful message about what behavior is and isn’t tolerated.
“It’s the responsibility of the employer to condemn any offensive actions publicly and lay out a specific plan for addressing those issues,” said Cara Hunter, chief operating officer of livingHR, Inc., an HR consulting firm. “Swift, genuine reactions can solidify cultural norms and lead to a workplace where all employees feel a sense of safety, inclusion, and belonging.”
Conducting Anonymous Employee Surveys With Lattice
Anonymous employee surveys are a powerful tool for gathering honest feedback and improving your workplace. By implementing these surveys effectively, you create a safe space for your employees to voice their opinions without fear, leading to more accurate insights and the potential for meaningful improvements. Following best practices in survey design, distribution, and response will help you build trust, boost engagement, and uncover blind spots you might otherwise miss.
Remember, the true value of these surveys lies not just in collecting data — but also in acting on the feedback you receive. Close the loop by communicating results and taking visible action to show your employees that their voices are heard and valued. Ultimately, anonymous surveys can help you foster a company culture of open communication and continuous improvement, contributing to a more engaged, satisfied, and productive workforce.
To learn more about Lattice’s anonymous engagement surveys, book a demo with one of our engagement experts today.
