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Confidentiality
How does confidentiality work
at Hive?
Your feedback in Onboarding, Exit, and 360 Surveys may be linked to demographic details or shared differently to support development and address specific needs. Please read the sections below to understand how these surveys can differ from regular Hive Surveys.
For Onboarding & Exit Surveys, confidentiality works a little differently to benefit you and your employer. For this survey, your employer has the option to remove the minimum group size (also known as the confidentiality limit) on demographic filtering. Please note, compared to regular Hive surveys your feedback may be more difficult to remain anonymous in the results. While Hive usually enforces a minimum group size to protect anonymity, this is not applied for Onboarding & Exit surveys.
This adjustment helps your employer quickly address any concerns you may have as a new employee or understand your reasons for leaving. The goal is to ensure a smoother onboarding experience and to make meaningful improvements for current and future employees. Please keep this in mind when submitting feedback.
How does confidentiality work for regular Hive Surveys?
Your employer recognises the importance of protecting your identity, and by choosing to use Hive, they’ve taken a step toward giving you a permanent voice. This ensures that your feedback can be shared openly and honestly, so meaningful improvements can be made in your organisation.
Here’s how Hive protects your identity:
- Your employer only receives your feedback, never your identity.
- Your feedback is combined with your co-workers’ and divided into demographic groups, like department or location. Hive makes this possible by cross-referencing your feedback with your user profile.
- We restrict your employer from viewing and filtering feedback in groups of fewer than 3 (we strongly recommend a minimum of six), even if filters are combined. But don’t worry, your feedback will still contribute to larger groupings.
How does confidentiality work for Onboarding & Exit Surveys?
For Onboarding & Exit Surveys, confidentiality works a little differently to benefit you and your employer. For these surveys, your employer has the option to remove the minimum group size (also known as the confidentiality limit) on demographic filtering. Please note, compared to regular Hive surveys your feedback may be more difficult to remain anonymous in the results. While Hive usually enforces a minimum group size to protect anonymity, this is not applied for Onboarding & Exit surveys.
This adjustment helps your employer quickly address any concerns you may have as a new employee or understand your reasons for leaving. The goal is to ensure a smoother onboarding experience and to make meaningful improvements for current and future employees. Please keep this in mind when submitting feedback.
How does confidentiality work for 360 Surveys?
360 Surveys are designed to support personal growth by gathering feedback from managers, peers, and self-reflection. To make sure feedback is constructive and safe, your employer can choose whether responses are confidential or the minimum group size is removed. You’ll always be able to see this in the survey introduction.
Unlike Onboarding or Exit surveys, 360 results are shared back in a feedback session with the employee. This means your feedback may be discussed in a conversation. Please note, compared to regular Hive surveys your feedback may be more difficult to remain anonymous in the results if your employer has removed the minimum group size.
Why has the confidentiality limit for Onboarding, Exit, and 360 Surveys been altered?
In smaller groups—or when only one person is involved— confidentiality is almost impossible.
Let’s say you have a new hire join your team, and a week into their role, they’re asked to fill out an onboarding survey about their experience so far. Even if the survey is set up to be “confidential”, it’s pretty clear who filled it out—it’s the only new person on the team. The same goes for exit surveys. If only one person is leaving the company, there’s no real way to hide who provided the feedback, no matter how the survey is framed.
This is fundamentally different from a large-scale survey. In a company-wide survey, where dozens or even hundreds of employees participate, feedback gets pooled together.
You might hear that 50% of people are unhappy with their workload, but there’s no way to pinpoint exactly which employees said it. That’s what true confidentiality looks like, and it’s easy to achieve when you’re working with large groups.
Onboarding, Exit, and 360 Surveys play a key role in improving your overall experience with an organisation.
Onboarding Survey: The confidentiality limit may have been adjusted to help your employer better support you during onboarding. If adjusted, your demographic information (such as your department or team) will be visible, but your name will never be displayed with your responses. By associating feedback with certain demographic information, your employer can address any team-specific or department-specific issues more effectively.
Exit Survey: In the exit survey, this adjustment helps your employer understand trends across different teams or departments, ensuring that patterns or issues are addressed in those areas to improve the overall employee experience.
360 Survey: Results are shared back in a feedback session with the reviewed employee. 360 surveys give you the chance to share honest, balanced feedback that helps your colleagues grow and strengthens team relationships. By contributing your perspective, you’re also shaping a more supportive and effective employee experience across the organisation.
Will my name be displayed alongside my responses?
No, your name will not be attached to your feedback. Instead, Hive assigns a randomly generated code to your profile, which is never shared with your employer. This code allows Hive to link your feedback with your user profile without revealing your identity.
All employee feedback is grouped into demographic categories, such as department or location. However, for Onboarding, Exit, and 360 Surveys, it may be harder to remain completely anonymous due to the removal of the confidentiality limit on filtering. Unlike regular Hive surveys, there is no minimum group size for these surveys, allowing your employer to address any immediate concerns more quickly.
If you have any further questions, feel free to reach out to your employer.
How to approach your surveys
When providing feedback:
- Be specific and constructive — share what worked, what didn’t, and suggest improvements.
- In a 360 Survey, focus on helping your colleague reflect and grow.
- In Onboarding or Exit Surveys, share personal experiences to highlight opportunities for your employer to improve.
Your thoughtful feedback is crucial in helping create a better employee experience for you and your colleagues.