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PI Diagnose: The importance of user anonymity and data confidentiality

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PI Diagnose is designed to ensure your voice is being heard within your organization, so you can enjoy a better employee experience. 

When you share candid feedback with your manager, you give them the ability to act on that data and create the change you seek. This is only possible when you’re open and honest—and that takes a survey environment that’s safe, secure, and free from negative repercussions. 

PI takes user privacy seriously. Learn how PI Diagnose protects your data, ensures anonymity, and keeps survey findings confidential.

Anonymity vs. confidentiality

When your manager asks you to complete a survey in PI Diagnose, your responses will always be kept anonymous and/or confidential. Here’s what each of those terms mean, and when they occur:

Anonymity refers to instances in which the data you submit is completely un-identifiable. Neither PI, your manager, nor anyone else at your organization will know the responses you submitted.

Your responses are anonymous whenever you complete a survey via a “universal link.” Your manager only sees these results in aggregate—meaning your results are viewed together with the rest of your team. As an extra precaution, PI doesn’t allow your manager to view any results until they’ve received at least three responses for each question of the survey.

Confidentiality refers to instances in which the information you submit is protected by PI, but could be identifiable if shared with your manager. This information may include, but isn’t limited to, open-ended comments or other quantitative responses gathered via an “org upload” (i.e., personalized) survey link.

In cases where your responses are linked to identifiable information, your quantitative responses will only be reported in summarized or aggregated form. Further, your qualitative responses won’t be linked to identifiable information, nor to your quantitative responses. This means even if your manager speculates that you provided a particular response, they won’t truly know it’s you, nor will they be able to tie it back to any of your other survey responses.

How we protect employee anonymity

Maintaining user anonymity in PI Diagnose is a top priority. There are many privacy measures in place to protect your anonymity, but here are three of the most crucial ones:

1. Individual employee names never appear in results, surveys, or insights dashboards. Your manager does not have the ability to see individual data, nor will they see your name associated with any responses.

2. Quantitative data only appears in aggregated form. Your manager won’t receive insights or data in the dashboard until there are at least three responses to any given question:

  • Once there are three responses to a survey, managers will see construct level insights (e.g., “Your team’s job score is 85”).
  • Once there are five responses to a survey, managers will see both construct and question level insights (e.g., “Your team’s job score is 85”; “Question 1 score is 90”).

3. Qualitative data, likewise, only appears in aggregated form. Your manager won’t receive insights or data in the dashboard until there are at least five unique responses to a given open-ended question. PI Diagnose uses natural language processing to find and present themes in the data to your manager. Your manager will never see your individual data, or the specific language you used to respond to the question.

How we protect your data

In addition to maintaining your privacy, PI Diagnose keeps your data safe. Your team’s data is stored on secure servers, all of which adhere to strict rules in compliance with industry-standard data security protocols. 

Your manager is able to download a .csv file containing this data. However, they can only do so when there are at least five responses to a survey. This file doesn’t contain any potentially identifiable data (i.e., no open-ended comments), and only contains numerical responses (e.g., likert questions).

In short, the only person who sees your specific responses is you, and any responses you submit are kept strictly confidential.

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