Could my boss have somehow seen my unflattering feedback?

Q. At the close of the year, we received an all-staff email requesting us to fill in a “confidential” employee’s survey about our departments. I thought confidential meant that, confidential, so I gave the true picture of our department, which is not good. I feel that my manager has been cold towards me since – might he have seen what I wrote? I fear being sacked. What do I do?

Assuming your manager was able to access the feedback and trace it to you, then it is totally unprofessional of your organisation to conduct a survey without ensuring it is confidential.

Most surveys are configured in such a way that even departments that have less than five employees are not classified separately, since it is possible for the manager to read the comments and associate them with a specific employee.

HR should have ensured that these rules of climate survey are followed to avoid such situations. The climate survey basically exposes the culture that exists in the organisation.

What most employees fail to understand is that culture is the wholesome behaviour of both the management and the employees, so you cannot really point a finger at any one group. I therefore hope that the issues you raised are not those that you could have resolved within the department.

That said, I have never heard of any organisation reprimanding an employee for their feedback in surveys. Most organisations pride themselves as being open and transparent, hence I doubt you will get into trouble because of expressing your views.

What is not good is when you bring up personal issues about your manager or your peers in the survey. I suggest that you ignore your ‘’feelings” towards the manager and focus on your work, if you continue panicking, this might affect your performance and place you in a collusion path with the manager.

However, if he approaches you about the survey, politely let him know that you meant no malice when you gave your feedback. If you sense that he is frustrating you after that discussion, escalate it to HR. It might also be that you are imagining things.

Get hold of yourself, you cannot continue living in fear since this anxiety is not good for your general wellbeing. In future, I advise that you confirm the confidentiality of any survey before you participate.

One of the benchmarks used to encourage employees to participate is the level of confidentiality, if this is not maintained, then the participation from employees will also be very low, rendering the survey inadequate to give any meaningful interpretation to the management.