Should your company give a shit about anonymous feedback?

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The panic! Your boss just added you on Facebook or followed you on Twitter.

There is a tendency that most of us will ignore this request. Some of us would even put our bosses in a group where they can’t see anything we post. When unavoidable, we’d post only content we think they’ll approve of. Our communication becomes self-censored.

Let’s put it this way: How much of the truth would you volunteer in a situation if you knew your identity was private, your reputation was protected, or your career safe? An indication of how much people value anonymity is the number of apps and websites that exist for individuals to privately vent their frustrations.

Organizations need actionable feedback. And some have tapped into anonymity to encourage employees to provide more honest and helpful responses — sometimes with disastrous results.

An example of this is Amazon’s Anytime Feedback Tool, exposed by the New York Times in 2015 for “being a river of intrigue and scheming.” The article describes how employees used a semi-anonymous method (only managers knew the identity of the feedback givers) to criticize each other, sometimes without cause.

While anonymous feedback can be helpful, it is not an automatic solution to all your company’s problems and may even make it difficult for companies to track problems and follow up. Misinterpretations may also occur especially when it’s a problem with a single individual or department. Because improving company performance depends on feedback, misinterpreted information could cause more harm than good.

Managed privacy

Those are some of the worst-case results of anonymous employee feedback. Still, it is a system that works if implemented properly, in the right settings. In fact, anonymous employee feedback is expected to transform employee experience. To achieve that, however, several principles must also be followed. This includes letting employees understand what the company aims to gain with the feedback. Employees should also be reminded that their feedback must be specific and, even when criticizing, should include constructive solutions to problems.

Significant thought should go into developing anonymous feedback systems and any application that requires human input. Josh Bersin, principal and founder of Bersin by Deloitte, noted: “Our research shows that companies that value open feedback and communication outperform their peers. This does not mean that an anonymous feedback tool should let employees do away with respect, honesty, confidentiality, and fairness.”

You need the feedback

Employees walking around without giving or receiving feedback is worse than them walking blind. (Even a walking stick provides some feedback.) If you need an incentive to implement regular workplace criticism, consider this: turnover is 14.9 percent lower in companies where employees received such compared with those that did not.

But it’s more than just giving or receiving feedback. The more honest and constructive these are, the more likely companies are to advance from them. Employees that don’t offer responses that organizations would find useful is a challenge. People at the workplace (bosses and managers) influence careers, and most of us will lean towards pleasing our superiors. This includes giving only positive feedback at work, and this is where the damage occurs.

The case for anonymity

Fear of retribution, losing their jobs, or a sense of futility are some reasons why employees don’t give honest feedback. Asking employees about company rules and decisions that they don’t care about could result in evasive action — responding with lies or even praising the circumstances.

Employees need the assurance that whatever they say about the company — positive or otherwise — can’t be held against them.

Companies use several measures to prevent this from happening like hiring third-party firms to conduct surveys. However, this measure may be expensive and time-consuming. There’s also no guarantee that the employees will be more forthcoming to a third-party.

Conclusion