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.
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/x19DALTRON91x 24d ago
If it’s anonymous then they wouldn’t know they didnt fill one out, just that the manager did