Do you know who I am?
There is a long standing belief in market research that face to face interviewing methodologies yield higher satisfaction scores. Not convinced? Have you ever been having a meal in a pub or restaurant with the person sitting opposite you having a good old moan about say, the toughness of their steak? And when the waitress does the polite “Is everything ok with your meals?” thing, they say “Yes, it’s lovely thank you”.
Why is that? Do we not want to be perceived as moaners, are we embarrassed about complaining in public, or making a fuss? But we should give honest and genuine feedback, it allows issues to be recognised, addressed and rectified.
Anonymity and confidentiality is an issue we frequently come across in our employee engagement survey work. Participants are sometimes reluctant to take part for fear they may be recognised and perhaps singled out. It is something we take very seriously and we include an email address and telephone number on all of our surveys, inviting anybody receiving one to contact us to discuss any aspects which may be concerning them.
We would assure them that all of our work is conducted in accordance with the Market Research Society’s Code of Conduct which states:-
26. Members must ensure that the anonymity of participants is preserved unless participants have given their informed consent for their details to be revealed or for attributable comments to be passed on.
The Code has a further comment:-
Members should be particularly careful that they do not inadvertently identify participants. For example this may arise where sample sizes are very small (such as business and employee research).
We therefore do not report back on groups with small numbers of participants, and stress that we collect demographic information (such as location, department/team, role and length of service) only to enable us to identify areas of the business where engagement is low and to target action plans to improve it.
The Survey Initiative team are experts in the field of employee research. If you would like to know more about how we can help your organisation with employee engagement, then call us on +44 (0)1255 850051 or visit our website.