Are company surveys a good thing or a bad thing…?

And can people really stay anonymous on those things?

Well, I guess every place of business is different, but I always thought these things were pretty risky.

The guy who wrote this story didn’t hold back, though…and he wasn’t messing around.

Check out what happened!

Create a toxic work culture and work your team to the ground? Get horrible reviews that affect your bonus.

“So I (25M) work in a very large MNC based in the service sector, generally focused on services like consulting, audit, financial advisory, tax filings, etc. (that’s as specific as I’m comfortable getting as I’m still in the process of leaving the company and don’t want to create issues until I’m out).

This isn’t going well…

Now the team I’m working with in this company has a highly toxic work culture with late nights and weekends requiring overtime work for 8-9 months out of the year, for which we, the employees, are also not compensated or appreciated in any way, shape or form.

Some of the directors or other high level individuals also have a tendency to yell, berate or demean us, and this has led to a situation where a large portion of my team has resigned in quick succession.

The toxicity I feel stems from the top and flows from my lead partner, from the limited interaction I’ve had with him. This toxicity then is replicated by directors and managers unto us.

Post this and post other team members’ resignations, I knew I had to leave, else the pressure of all their work would also fall on me being one of the only experienced hires left in the team (having been here for upwards of 5 years).

I often tell my colleagues this as well, but “in our company, hard work is not appreciated, but rather exploited”.

Now this being the case I’ve put in my notice of resignation at this company and am in the process of exiting to be able to go for a different workplace maybe in a different service line, but as the company has upped the notice period to 3 months (happened for all new hires starting a few months before my joining), I’m still in the service notice period.

Now, my company being an MNC, has policies in place that are supposed to work against such toxic cultures.

Namely, there’s an international, firm-wide survey that goes out to all employees in all deparments that we fill out where we answer questions like: ‘Do you feel your well being is well taken care of? Do you expect to stay in this company in the next one year? Do you feel you’re given time to take care of your mental health? Do you feel you’re able to approach your seniors regarding problems in the workplace? Are you happy with the support you receive from the team around you?”

The answers are then sorted out according to each partner’s team members and subordinates and compared to the averages of responses across their city, their country, their service line, etc.

This isn’t going to change anytime soon…

My partner, aka my boss’s boss, had a team-wide annual discussion event a few weeks ago where he complained to all of us (his team) about how we should not voice our complaints in this survey, since the issues we have are with his subordinates to whom we report, so if we face issues we should come talk to him, but instead giving negative reviews in these surveys only reflects poorly on him while he’s not the reason for our issues.

In the same meeting he went on to say that the high pressure and late nights are to be expected and will not change.

The revenge:

My boss, a director in the company under our partner and his group, recently asked me to see him to discuss a follow up survey of the same nature with more detailed questions.

Now these surveys are completely anonymous at the firm wide global level so I wasn’t too worried, but I had filled out the follow up survey just the day prior so I had a little trepidation.

Honesty is the best policy, right?

He asked if I have filled out the survey and i chose to answer honestly and told him I had, at which point he seemed distraught (I suspect his boss had asked him to unofficially bring about better reviews) that I had done so as I’m an employee leaving the firm, and they wanted only answers for employees remaining in the firm to be able to see what is lacking for them and how can their needs be met (I call ******** on this, I think they just wanted to improve the survey responses so the partner gets a good rating since it apparently affects his bonuses).

Here it comes…

Now I knew it affects his bonus so i intentionally filled the survey with real (negative) reviews to ensure the results are skewed against him and further encouraged our remaining colleagues who are resigning to also give real reviews to keep them honest but to not tell our boss they had filled the survey.

I don’t know how much it will affect our partner in the grand scheme of things, but I hope it makes him realise he’s the source of the toxicity and he can’t expect our team to change until and unless he brings the change about.”

And here’s how people reacted…

This Reddit user shared their thoughts.

Another person spoke up.

This individual talked about work surveys…

Another person shared their own story.

This Reddit user told a story from their past…

When you gotta go, you gotta go.

Nice work!

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.