How to Ensure Anonymity in an Online Employee Survey?

In employee surveys, there is often a risk that respondents will not answer openly for fear that their answers will not remain anonymous. There are various ways to ensure anonymity for employees, such as:

• Using trusted software. Employees must trust that the tool they use to fill in the survey will not allow linking between identifiers and answers (IDs and answers must be stored in different databases).
• Individualised survey URLs should be avoided as this may be noticed by respondents. It is also useful to make it clear in the invitation to participate in the survey that we do not use individualised URLs, e.g. "We guarantee you complete privacy of your answers, therefore the survey URLs are not individualised ...". This can help to increase response rates significantly, as many respondents are increasingly bothered by the fact that they receive an individualised URL, knowing that this in principle also provides insight into individual responses.
• Using a trusted person (courier, secretary) to bring envelopes with survey access codes to employees' offices (or leave them on a central administrative desk for the employees to pick up). This is an elegant way of avoiding duplicate or unsolicited responses, while also ensuring complete anonymity, as the URL is the same for all respondents. The functionality is only available for users of the 3KA package for individuals, and for users of the business packages for groups.

In addition, it must be ensured that IP addresses and other paradata are not archived.

Some of the functionalities described are only available for users of the 3KA package for individuals, and for users of the business packages for groups.