How does engagement survey confidentiality work in 15Five?

Engagement survey responses in 15Five are confidential — not anonymous. Responses are linked to employee accounts internally, but results are only displayed as aggregated group data that meets the minimum reporting threshold. No individual responses are ever surfaced to managers or leaders.

Direct Answer

15Five enforces confidentiality by aggregating responses and withholding results for any group that does not meet the minimum respondent threshold. Individual response data is never displayed.

Key Rules

  • Participation is not disclosed. 15Five does not reveal which employees participated or declined. Admins can view group-level response rates during an active campaign, but not individual participation status.
  • No individual responses are identified. No one in the organization can see how a specific person responded to any survey statement. Results are available only in aggregate, for groups that meet the minimum respondent threshold.
  • Written feedback (open-text responses) is confidential. Written responses are presented in aggregate and can be filtered by only one group type at a time (for example, by Department). Written responses for a group are displayed only if that group meets the minimum respondent threshold.
  • Contact information is not shared or sold. Personal contact information is protected with industry-standard encryption and is not used beyond the platform.
  • Responses below the threshold are not discarded. If a respondent belongs to a group that does not meet the threshold, their responses are still included in the organization's overall Engagement Score and in results for any other groups they belong to that do meet the threshold.
  • The default minimum threshold is 5 respondents. Engagement Admins and Organization Admins can lower this to 3 or 4 in Engagement feature settings. Lowering the threshold increases the risk of respondents being identified in small groups.

Common Misunderstanding

Confidential is not the same as anonymous. Responses are associated with employee accounts within 15Five for grouping and segmentation purposes. They are never exposed to managers, leaders, or other employees — but they are not unattributed within the system.

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