Confidentiality: how does it work?

InternetSpiegel will only report average results per group. Together with your employer, we will decide on a minimum group size to be reported on. Groups are usually comprised of between 5 and 10 employees, with the minimum lower limit being 5. InternetSpiegel applies this lower limit in accordance with the general standard for carrying out employee surveys as specified by ESOMAR and privacy laws. If a group is smaller than the agreed-upon minimum group size, we will never report results for this group to your employer. Thanks to these measures, we can guarantee that surveys cannot be traced back to you. Please note that your responses to open-ended questions will be copied literally.

Response rate per group and reporting
In addition to a group size, we also always agree on a clear response rate limit. This is the minimum number of participants in a group that has to have completed the questionnaire. Is this limit not achieved? The results of this group will not be reported at the group level and will be incorporated into a higher-level group that has achieved this limit. This is usually the department or organization.

Exception
If you are a manager, your department’s results will possibly say something directly about you as a manager. In this sense, you will be personally assessed as a manager.

Example A: confidentiality per group

The group must consist of at least 5 employees (group limit) and at least 5 of the 5 employees must have responded (response rate limit).

Example B: confidentiality of underlying groups

However, it is possible for an underlying group that did achieve the response rate limit to not be reported (group 4). This occurs when another group under the same higher level does not achieve the response rate limit (group 3). That’s because the results of the only blue respondent (group 3) will become traceable if both the results of group 4 as well as the higher-level group results are shared (groups 3+4). For this reason, the results of groups 3 and 4 will only be reported in the higher-level group.

Note: The responses given by you and your colleagues to the open-ended questions will be copied literally in the (group) report. It will not be possible to see who made what comments here, unless you yourself mention your name or another description that could be traced back to you. That’s because your comments will be copied word for word (literally) in order to properly reflect your comments.