US Company in Ireland, Staff Survey, Identifiable information, GDPR

RebelButtMunch

A US based company published the results of a global anonymous staff survey. In that survey free form typing was allowed. In one case, from the responses, it's quite easy to identify both the individual in question and their manager. The individual also made some specific complaints about their manager. The individual and manager are based in Ireland.

The company provides an alternative Employee Relations process to handle such complaints, which would be the more appropriate channel.

A) Do either the staff or manager have grounds for complaint?
Is that GDPR compliant?

Thanks.

skallywag

That is an interesting one. I have also filled out such surverys before, but as I recall it was pointed out in the smallprint that anything entered could be quoted anonymously, hence you needed to take care not to blatantly identify yourself through your comments.

For the sake of argument I could also imagine a situation where one colleague could also blatantly try to mimic another if they wanted to stir the pot ...

Riskymove

I think the issue here is that it is supposed to be anonymous survey according to the policy

free text is not a great idea and can lead to these issues. I do not think it is a GDPR issue - GDPR does not guarantee anonymity and I presume the survey was voluntary or at least it was particular individuals decision to make the comments they did in free text.

_Brian

I worked in a place that implemented these surveys.

It was discovered that if you nominated employees one at a time you could see the feedback and then nominate the next thus seeing feedback from each employee.

What I’m saying is always be careful filling in these things, rarely in life is anything safe and secure.