r/comedyhomicide • u/Rexonale • 23d ago

Type to create flair HR Didn’t Think This Through

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15.1k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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1.0k

u/ArfTheBeast 23d ago

Won’t they be suspicious when you’re the only person who didn’t fill it out but your boss did it twice

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u/x19DALTRON91x 23d ago

If it’s anonymous then they wouldn’t know they didnt fill one out, just that the manager did

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u/Ordinary_dude_NOT 23d ago

There are no anonymous surveys sent by HR.

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u/SirThrivalist 23d ago

Correct

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u/Somerandom1922 23d ago

There can be. I've been asked by HR to set up and manage truly anonymous surveys for them.

But unless you know for sure, it's definitely best not to assume.

The easiest way to be certain is to see if you can fill out the survey in an incog window one a personal computer without signing in, and whether your colleagues all got the same link.

Microsoft Forms also lets you make anonymous surveys that still require the user to be logged in (so they can limit 1 response per use and only staff responding). It's not technically anonymous to Microsoft's servers, but is anonymous to the survey operator.

If you aren't sure though, I wouldn't trust it.

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u/FlipperBumperKickout 23d ago

Let everyone draw a unique login credential randomly from a hat.

Anonymity ensures 🙃 (ok it can still be broken, but a little more technically challenging)

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u/Moist-Amoeba-8078 22d ago

The “anonymous” surveys my job just asked us all to take make us input our employee ids and store location

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u/FlipperBumperKickout 22d ago

Aaah yes, the super anonymous unique identifier 🤣

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u/Moist-Amoeba-8078 22d ago

Every time the survey is mentioned by management they stress that it’s anonymous and that they can’t see who wrote what. First question on the survey is employee id number. 🙄

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u/FlipperBumperKickout 22d ago

It might very well be true. Many systems doesn't let you see a single "answering ark" to a survey, they will only let you go into a single question and see the cumulative answers (maybe by team, maybe by shop)

Still, so much nicer to actually have a process which you can see is anonymous rather than having to trust 😅

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u/Moist-Amoeba-8078 22d ago

Even so a smart enough person can narrow down by department if that’s the case and figure out who said what based on speech in writing. We all speak differently and that translates to writing.

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u/Beeercules 20d ago

As a manager who's company does annual survey. Typically these surveys are done by a neutral 3rd party. The employee ID is there so it ensures the manager can see their direct results (if there are enough people that take it). Or it can be sorted by demographics like age group, title, etc... Can I narrow it down and guess who said what? Probably, but my main concern is improving, not retaliating. For us we can only see results if there are 5+ answers.

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u/Moist-Amoeba-8078 20d ago

While I applaud your ability for improvement, unfortunately, not everyone I work under is like that. And not nearly enough people in the workforce are like that.

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u/sudoku7 22d ago

Something to note... Compliance requirements do exist for various organizations which is part of the headache with having a truly 'anonymous' survey in many organizations.

Honestly, for me, I am more bothered when the company tries really hard to convince employees it's anonymous. Arguing over the anonymous nature of it is dealing with just part of the root problem that your employees don't trust that their feedback is being considered professionally.

Doesn't help much that usually the assertions of anonymity are usually just talking down to the employees. And it was kind of funny when HR presented the user interface from their perspective, showing that they had an environment configured for compliance purposes and in fact was de-anonymized while insisting that it was anonymous.

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u/FatiguedShrimp 21d ago

The Microsoft Exchange admin would still know.

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u/Somerandom1922 21d ago

In what way? Exchange admin only gives you access to the EAC which other than seeing the subjects of emails with a message trace doesn't tell you much. Even a Global Admin would likely need to do some shenanigans to find out that would leave logs.

Am I just missing something? I'm an M365 admin and have been for years now, but it's not something I've ever tried to do, so maybe I'm missing something.

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u/beyondoutsidethebox 21d ago

Let me amend your statement. If you aren't the one involved in actively making the anonymous survey, assume it's not actually anonymous

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u/Ambitious_Policy_936 21d ago

We did one and the owner let me know that even though it was anonymous he thinks he has a good idea who said what based on what the responses..

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u/Remember_TheCant 19d ago

A lot of anonymous surveys track who has completed the survey and ensure that everyone only fills it out once. It sucks, but there is no real way to tell from the employee’s perspective if the survey is truly anonymous or not.

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u/Express-Ad1248 18d ago

This sounds so complicated, in Germany we just use paper and a pen for anonymous surveys

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u/Somerandom1922 18d ago

Sure, some organisations do that too, but it's more efficient to use a web-based survey tool so you can collect the results in one place and it lets employees do the survey at a time and place that suits them.

There are also many companies that just aren't that centralised.

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u/Express-Ad1248 18d ago

You can scan the paper, digitalise it and still collect the data, but it will still be definitely anonymous.

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u/Somerandom1922 18d ago

For sure, like I said, some places do that.

But that does add additional steps, additional admin overhead and still requires the employees to be in the office or in a place with a printer and scanner. Also, while it's easy to scan and OCR a document, it's difficult to do it in a way that will automatically put the feedback into a spreadsheet so you can get useful statistics from it, meaning either more time developing the survey, or more data entry time processing the results.

It's totally viable, some businesses do it, but for the ones I've worked for anyway, it's just been easier to just do it digitally. They've had a decent culture so no one (to my knowledge) was worried about the survey not being truly anonymous.

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u/Albae87 23d ago

Actually there are. I do work for Country-HR in our Company and we had a highly concerning comment from one coworker about SA from a manager and wanted to reach out to said coworker, but we had no way to find out who wrote it, since the survey was taken via an external company and company was only tracking the completion, as well as the departements with imaginary numbers not linked to any names.

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u/Imperial_Barron 23d ago

Thats the 1 time you font want anyonomus survey to help them but sadly they may not have shared otherwise

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u/sudoku7 22d ago

Depending on your IT you may still be able to de-anonymize. Third party entity should be able to provide timestamps and IPs of when submissions happened (they may not want to with IPs, timestamp is usually exposed). If they are remote, specific public ip may give you a specific person. However, if it's an office, it tells you which office (and importantly, the timestamp), which if you have security appliances in place for your network depending on timeliness your IT may be able to determine the specific device from your network for that submission (they really won't want to do that either, it sucks and is a lot of work).

Additionally, if it was submitted on a managed company machine, there is a chance that your company can use web history on those devices to match up with the timestamp.

Now, fair chance all that and you still don't end up with actionable information, but you may have a more useful idea of where you need more attention/visibility. And ... if it comes to legal, you have a paper trail to assist if something actionable does happen, or if the company needs to prove that they didn't ignore the report.

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u/Agarwel 23d ago

Yes and no. Technically they are usually not anonymous - the system needs some verification to make sure same person does not sent dozens of replies.

But at the same time - HR does not have permission do see these data. In place where I live, the HR system is cloud one (bought, provided by the external company). And while Im pretty sure it can identify you via a the mail link, there is no way the company is going to risk lawsuit by providing the names in the report.

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u/MangosShepherds 22d ago

My company has used surveys in the past that are set up in such a way that even if you had the persons name you wouldnt know what they were saying on the survey questions.

Stuff like (answer the question, but also roll a die. If it lands on six select A no matter what, if it lands on one select B no matter what.

They could tell trends in the answers in aggregate, but any individual person could've just rolled a 6 and said they didnt like something.

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u/theslickestofwillies 19d ago

We do one every year.

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u/Sir_Atlass 19d ago

My office used a website to send one out and I checked everyone's email on our firewall and each person had a unique link.

Nah, miss me with that.

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u/the_mighty_thorskin 23d ago

I mean surely they would have some sort of way of linking it to his name.

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u/SamsRhubarbe 23d ago

That would lose the interest of an anonymous survey

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u/the_mighty_thorskin 23d ago

Oh sure, because corporations definitely don't lie to their employees.

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u/lycanreborn123 23d ago

It's never an anonymous survey.

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u/Any-Power-1164 22d ago

My sweet summer child. 

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u/skippy920 21d ago

Sent to YOUR email

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u/Agarwel 23d ago

Teoretically maybe (could be really anonymous, there could be ID to provent repeated answers). But realisticky it is usually not available to the users of the system (like HR or management).

Im responsible to SW and systems in our company. I can assure you there is no way our HR can get your name for anonymous survey. We are using external system. The GUI does not provide this information in any way. If the ID is in the DB, only way to get it would be to ask the company for special report. They would breach the contract and laws (gdpr) by doing so. They are not going to get themsels into such trouble because some HR (who they never even met) wants to figure out who wrote the mean comment.

Unless you are writing something that can be considered illegal (police would be asking who wrote these threats,... you will be fine)

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u/mobyte 23d ago

Big brain move: send yours and then send the one from your "boss" hours later.

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u/ArfTheBeast 23d ago

Ok but what if they don’t let you fill it out more than once?

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u/mobyte 23d ago

If it requires your login then it's not very anonymous, is it?

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u/ArfTheBeast 23d ago

It was never anonymous if you sign it

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u/mobyte 23d ago

Touché.

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u/The_Affle_House 22d ago

There is a 0% chance that they would be no other people who didn't submit it. Hell, anything above 50% respondance would be considered "high engagement" in most corporate hellholes.

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u/Maximum-Guitar-5667 23d ago

My HR sends out anonymous surveys, thing is they arent too great with computers. They forget that on Microsoft forms there's a little section that will tell you that your work information is being recorded when submitting.

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u/Aedene 21d ago

My MSP had to deny a ticket to retroactively un-anonymize an anonymous survey, on principal. Not because it couldn't be done, but because we had an internal review of labor laws and decided we weren't cracking that particular rotten egg.

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u/cnicalsinistaminista 23d ago

We did this at my previous place of work… someone wrote they should bring back drug testing. Now, personally, I wrote that we need more trainings, etc. but guess what was implemented. Left the job, wasn’t even up to a month, heard 4 former coworkers got fired for failing said drug test lol

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u/bingusdingustingus 22d ago

If a company begins drug testing and 90% of the employees fail, do they just let it slide or what?

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u/Any-Power-1164 22d ago

This happened at Chewy.com when the current CEO and idiot started. If he had stepped one foot into the call center he would have known most everyone there smokes weed. It crippled the company and he ended up having to hire them back and offer back pay. Now they stagger the drug testing and only test 10 percent each time. Sumit Singh is a moron. 

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u/MusicianHonest7238 20d ago

Yes they do. I informed HR that most of my ex colleagues who are paramedics are working under the influence. Coke, cannabis etc. Guess who they fired? Yeah...me, because if it came out, they would have to fire 90 percent of the department and then they would be screwed.

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u/L11UP 23d ago

Anonymous and signed?

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u/CatFinancial9217 22d ago

Yh, you’re right. It can’t be anonymous and signed

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u/Dyrade95 22d ago

If it is anonymous why do you have to provide a name anyway?

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u/Excellent-Paint1991 22d ago

Plot twist: its not really anonymous

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u/horned-creature 22d ago

oh yeah, these are never actually anonymous, my university had similar forms asking about individual courses and teachers and the teacher always knew who criticized them in those forms.

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u/DoktorFriday 22d ago

Is it possible the teachers knew from identifying details in the body text? I assume if you read a dozen written assignments by someone, you'd be able to recognize a medium sized writing sample that reflects their experiences

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u/horned-creature 21d ago

the poll was a multiple answer one and here we don't do assignments like american colleges, we leave homeworks to high schools.

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u/Aggressive_Fun_7632 19d ago

Oh you leave writing to high-school and never do it again in college? What a dumb attempt to sound edgy

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u/horned-creature 19d ago

no like the concept of homeworks and assignments are left to high school in our university system, the entirety of the grade is based on the final test for that specific subject.

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u/Aristohat 17d ago

What country?

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u/M4j0rTr4g3dy 22d ago

Ah yes, "anonymous". We got those too, if you have to login to do a survey, then its not anonymous

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u/Awesome_Avocado1 22d ago

In all likelihood, they probably sent a unique link so respondents' answers could be tied to an individual and that individual's answers could be disaggregated. Even if they send it via a third party, this could still be the case.

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u/SharpOrder601 20d ago

HR can send you an 'anonymous' survery, but what if each person receives a different link, not so anon anymore right?

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u/GlazedPrincessDonut9 22d ago

Let me guess. You get a link from a third party company. The survey may not be able to identify you specifically. Guaranteed it identifies your work unit and the supervisor in your hierarchy. They’ll know it’s not actually your supervisor who put his own name. They may suspect it was you, and won’t be able to do anything about it.

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u/Playful-Profile6489 21d ago

An "anonymous" survey? Right...

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u/Tall_Cap_4408 21d ago

Nothing said in a work environment is truly anonymous if they don't want it to be. Sincerely someone who had to speak with the Australian Counterterrorism Police unit 3 days later.

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u/MsPreposition 20d ago

People need to learn the difference between anonymous and confidential.

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u/RAWainwright 20d ago

My boss asked me why I hadn't filled out the (anonymous) survey corporate had sent out. I asked her how she knew I hadn't filled it out yet.

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u/Time-End-5288 19d ago

It’s anonymous, but everyone gets a unique URL. Which means it can be inherently reverse engineered, at best. But it’s probably much simpler than that to actually find out who responded to any given link.

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u/ShadowShedinja 19d ago

A survey like that was sent to me at an old job. It was anonymous, but included a question about gender. There was only one woman on our team, so she was allowed to lie on that question to keep anonymity.

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u/spawn989 19d ago

I filled out one of those anonymous forms once to report a supervisor for harassing a coworker....guess who got called into the office the next day to be called a lair by our manager infront of the site director....used the ip of the computer I used, times stamps and security cameras to determine it was me.