Workleap Officevibe
82/100Non-anonymous feedback is visible in the employee immediate team when the employee chooses to reveal identity.
Candora research / 2026 index
Anonymous Employee Survey Trust Index 2026
We compared public documentation for employee listening platforms and general survey tools to answer one practical question: could HR see, export, reconstruct, or accidentally expose what one employee said?
Published 2026-09-08Sources reviewed 8 September 202611 tools reviewed
headline result
Candora96/100
Workleap Officevibe82/100
Lattice76/100
Culture Amp74/100
15Five72/100
Qualtrics Employee Experience58/100
main finding
“Anonymous” is not one product model.
Some tools are employer-anonymous, some are confidential and attributed, and some are general form builders with privacy settings the owner must get right.
highest risk
Identifiable exports and raw rows.
If a dashboard hides small groups but a spreadsheet exposes rows, identifiers, timestamps, IPs, or comments, the employee promise is weaker than the interface suggests.
Candora position
Trust should be a boundary, not a setting.
The safest promise is not “HR will behave carefully.” It is “the product does not give HR the respondent-level view.”
index table
Trust scores
Scores compare the documented privacy posture for employee survey use, not the breadth, maturity, analytics power, or overall product quality of each platform.
| Tool | Score | Band | Privacy model | Documented risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Candora Anonymous employee survey service | 96 | Strong | Employer-anonymous survey workflow: operational participant data is separated from response content and HR receives privacy-safe group findings. | Self-assessed because Candora is the publisher. A respondent could still include identifying detail in open text, so reports avoid raw comment display. |
| Workleap Officevibe Employee engagement and pulse surveys | 82 | Strong | Anonymous survey scores and anonymous feedback with documented aggregation and threshold rules. | Question reports use a rolling window where distributions can show after the team-level threshold is met, even if one person answered a specific question. |
| Lattice Employee engagement and pulse surveys | 76 | Good | Anonymous engagement and pulse survey modes with aggregate reporting and participant-facing notices. | Anonymous Engagement surveys can optionally allow individual response exports with names and emails hidden but fields such as manager or department visible. |
| Culture Amp Employee experience platform | 74 | Good | Most regular employee surveys are confidential and attributed rather than strictly anonymous; unattributed surveys are available but not the norm. | The common model links responses to employee data inside the platform, so employee trust depends on reporting protections and raw-data governance. |
| 15Five Employee engagement and performance platform | 72 | Good | Confidential engagement surveys: responses are associated with employee accounts internally, then shown only as aggregate group data. | Admins can lower the engagement threshold to 3 or 4, and lifecycle surveys are different: individual lifecycle responses can be visible to account admins and some managers. |
| Qualtrics Employee Experience Enterprise research and employee experience platform | 58 | Configurable | Highly configurable confidentiality/anonymity thresholds for employee experience dashboards. | Organization-wide thresholds can also be unset, leaving dashboard editors to set thresholds or omit them. Privacy depends heavily on governance. |
| Typeform General survey and form builder | 45 | Configurable | Anonymous by default unless the form asks for identity or identity is passed through URL parameters or hidden fields. | The Results panel supports individual response views, downloads, filters, hidden field values, tags, and search; Typeform is not an employee-survey privacy system by default. |
| SurveyMonkey General survey platform | 38 | Fragile | Anonymous Responses is a collector-level setting; most collectors otherwise record respondent information such as IP address. | Email invitation collectors include email address, IP address, first name, last name and custom data in results by default; existing responses cannot be retroactively made anonymous. |
| Jotform General form builder | 32 | Fragile | Forms can avoid asking for personal fields, but submission IP is collected and can be shown in tables, notifications, and reports. | Jotform documentation says Submission IP is a built-in column and can be included in form reports or notification emails. |
| Google Forms General form and spreadsheet tool | 28 | Fragile | A form can avoid collecting email, but owners can collect verified or manually entered email addresses and export response data. | Google support documents owner controls for collecting respondent email addresses and viewing/downloading responses; employee-survey thresholds and comment safeguards are not built in. |
| Dayforce Engagement HCM engagement survey module | 54 | Configurable | Survey anonymity can be configured with respondent-name collection, response thresholds, comment thresholds, and administrator threshold behavior. | Administrators can select settings that collect respondent names or exempt some administrator views from threshold restrictions. |
what HR sees
When anonymity is off
This is the most employee-relevant part of the research. The risk is not the word “anonymous”; it is the admin screen, response table, export, or report that appears when the setting is identifiable, relaxed, or manually configured.
Lattice
76/100If an admin creates an identifiable survey, responses are visible to admins and linked to the employee name and identity; Lattice warns participants that their name will show with responses.
Culture Amp
74/100In the regular attributed/confidential model, Culture Amp uses employee data for reporting groups rather than showing individual answers in normal reports.
15Five
72/100Lifecycle surveys are not protected by the same engagement confidentiality thresholds, so individual lifecycle responses can be visible to authorized roles.
Qualtrics Employee Experience
58/100The public admin documentation reviewed here focuses on dashboard thresholds rather than a single identifiable-response screen.
Typeform
45/100If HR asks for name/email or passes employee identifiers through URL parameters, that information appears in Results alongside answers.
SurveyMonkey
38/100With Email Invitations and Anonymous Responses off, survey results include email address, IP address, and any first name, last name or custom contact data included in the collector.
Jotform
32/100A form owner can show the Submission IP column beside entries and can include IP address in notification emails or reports.
Google Forms
28/100When email collection is enabled, respondents are required to provide or confirm an email address that is stored with the response data.
Dayforce Engagement
54/100If HR selects the option to collect respondent name, each employee name appears with that employee survey responses.
method
How we scored the index
We scored only what public documentation supported. Missing information was treated cautiously, not as proof of unsafe design. Candora is scored using its public product promise and is labeled as self-assessed.
Employer cannot view participant-linked answers
30 ptsThe highest-weighted factor is whether the employer can open a row, record, export, or identifiable response view that joins a person to what they said.
Anonymity is fixed rather than a fragile setting
20 ptsA stronger system gives HR fewer switches that can silently weaken the employee-facing promise after setup.
Small groups and indirect identification are protected
20 ptsWe looked for documented thresholds, filter limits, suppression, or protections against working out a hidden group by subtraction.
Written feedback is protected
15 ptsOpen text is risky because names are not the only identifiers. We favored systems that avoid broad raw-comment exposure or use separate comment thresholds.
Completion tracking is separated from answers
10 ptsUnique links and reminders can be useful, but employees need evidence that completion status cannot be joined to response content by the employer.
Participant-visible explanation
5 ptsWe credited tools that show respondents what anonymity, confidentiality, exports, or identifiable settings mean before they answer.
source log
Documents reviewed
Vendor documentation changes. These links were reviewed on 8 September 2026; future versions of this report should update both the table and the downloadable data.
CandoraHow Candora protects employee survey responsesReviewed 8 September 2026CandoraCandora product pageReviewed 8 September 2026Workleap OfficevibeWorkleap Officevibe & anonymityReviewed 8 September 2026Workleap OfficevibeWorkleap Officevibe: Team Manager FAQReviewed 8 September 2026LatticeAnonymity in Engagement Surveys and PulseReviewed 8 September 2026LatticeWho can view survey responses?Reviewed 8 September 2026Culture AmpAttributed and Unattributed Survey FormatsReviewed 8 September 2026Culture AmpConfidentiality Protections in ReportingReviewed 8 September 2026Culture AmpUnattributed Survey Guide for ParticipantsReviewed 8 September 202615FiveHow does engagement survey confidentiality work in 15Five?Reviewed 8 September 202615FiveDownload Executive Results Deck and Manager PDFsReviewed 8 September 2026QualtricsAnonymous Responses (Admin)Reviewed 8 September 2026TypeformHow to identify your respondentsReviewed 8 September 2026TypeformWorking with your responsesReviewed 8 September 2026SurveyMonkeyMaking Responses AnonymousReviewed 8 September 2026SurveyMonkeyAre my survey responses anonymous and secure?Reviewed 8 September 2026JotformHow to Find the IP Addresses of Your Form RespondentsReviewed 8 September 2026JotformJotform Privacy PolicyReviewed 8 September 2026Google FormsView and manage form responsesReviewed 8 September 2026DayforceConfigure Data Anonymity for SurveysReviewed 8 September 2026
interpretation
A lower score does not mean a product is bad. It means the tool requires more buyer governance, admin configuration, employee communication, and export discipline before HR can safely call a sensitive employee survey anonymous.
The safest employee-facing question is simple: could anyone at the employer open, export, filter, or infer my individual answer? If the answer depends on a setting, role, export, or manual rule, employees deserve to know that before they respond.
membership
Make the anonymity promise simpler to prove.
Candora is built for organisations that want employee survey responses to be completely anonymous to HR while still receiving privacy-safe group findings and a usable leadership report.