A nurse said he was reprimanded by management at the hospital where he works after he offered criticisms about the workplace in a supposedly "anonymous" work survey.
According to TikToker Alex, who goes by the handle @nurse.alexrn, he “got in trouble” after listing what he “doesn’t like about work" and that a manager revealed to him that supervisors routinely "track" survey respondents despite advertising the survey as "anonymous."
In the end, he said, "I just got written up for something stupid and that was it."
You can hear what he said in the video below.
Alex said:
"All right so this is how I got in trouble for doing the 'anonymous' survey at work."
"So I get an email from my manager saying, 'Hey do this anonymous survey about what you don't like about work.' And you know here's the thing, I was super critical on that survey, but I was also very professional."
"And then the very next day my manager comes up to me and says, 'Hey let's have a meeting about that survey. And I was like, um, no thank you, and also I thought that was anonymous by the way.'"
"And she just flat out told me, 'Yeah, no they can still track you. And the chief nursing officer wants to talk to you as well.'"
Alex went on to say that he refused to sit down for a meeting and that his manager "tried for like a solid two and a half weeks to get this meeting with me" before he was officially written up.
The incident took place over a year ago with a former employer, Alex later clarified in an email to The Daily Dot, but it has nonetheless sparked considerable discussion online, receiving over 15,200 shares as of this writing.
Many responded with their own experiences, shared advice, and cautioned that employee surveys are never, in fact, anonymous.
@adeliaforsberg/TikTok
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Many workers distrust employee engagement surveys, according to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), an organization that promotes the role of HR as a profession and provides education, certification, and networking to its members, while lobbying Congress on issues pertinent to labor management.
The organization notes that "anonymous" employee surveys often ask respondents to provide detailed information such as what department they work in and their compensation level, information that can be used to narrow down the employee pool and identify the respondent even if they don't provide their names.
These surveys are often "confidential" but never actually "anonymous" and should be administered by an "independent third party" who can analyze the results without providing companies with individual information that can be used to identify survey respondents.
