What confidential employee feedback does, and doesn't, hide
Who can see what when employees answer a pulse or send feedback confidentially, why small teams change the rules, and what no tool can hide for you.
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People answer honestly when they trust what happens to their answers. That trust depends on specifics, not on the word "anonymous" in a banner. This guide sets out what confidentiality in Pulsido does and doesn't do, so you can explain it to your team accurately.
Confidential, not anonymous
Pulsido says confidential rather than anonymous, and the difference matters. Pulsido's servers can link a confidential message back to the person who wrote it. That's how a manager's reply reaches them. The link is never shown to anyone at the company, in any screen, export, or report.
"Anonymous" would mean nobody could ever connect an answer to a person. A tool that lets managers reply to feedback can't honestly promise that, so we don't use the word for it.
Who sees what
| Pulse and survey results | Confidential feedback and comments | |
|---|---|---|
| Employees | Nothing beyond their own answers | Only what they sent, and the replies |
| Team managers | Their teams and teams under them, once 3 or more people answered | What was sent to their teams, without the author's name, and only the week it was written. Not feedback from teams of fewer than 5 |
| Owners and executives | The whole company and every team | All of it, including feedback to leadership and from small teams (without the team name) |
| Admins | Survey response rates, not answers | None, unless they're also an owner or executive |
Admins set the program up but don't see answers. That's deliberate: in many companies, the person configuring the tool sits in IT or People Ops and shouldn't be reading their colleagues' feedback.
The rules that make it hold
- Three or more people. A score, or the answers to a survey question, only shows when at least three different people are behind it. With two, either one could work out the other's answer.
- Per question. An optional question that only two people answered stays hidden, even if the survey as a whole had many respondents.
- Comparing views doesn't reveal anyone. If someone can see both a team and the wider company, they could subtract one from the other. Pulsido holds a team's results back whenever the people outside it would be just one or two.
- Small teams are protected. Confidential feedback from a team of fewer than five people doesn't go to that team's manager. It goes to owners and executives, without the team name.
- Tiny companies. If the whole company has fewer than five people, confidential feedback is off, and the form says the person's name will show.
- Timing is blurred. Managers see the week feedback was written, not the time. "Sent at 11:42pm on Sunday" can identify someone as surely as a name.
Three small-team examples
A team of four sends feedback about their manager. It doesn't reach the manager. It goes to owners and executives, labeled as coming from a small team, without saying which one. The person who wrote it sees this before sending.
A team of six answers the pulse, but only two answer a question about workload. The workload score stays hidden for that team until a third person answers. The team's other scores show normally.
A manager oversees a parent team of eight, with a sub-team of seven. The manager could compare the parent team with the sub-team and isolate the one person outside it. Pulsido holds the sub-team's confidential results back in that view, so subtracting one from the other reveals nothing.
What no tool can hide
Confidentiality hides who wrote something. It can't hide what they wrote. "The release on the 14th was a mess because I was the only one on call" identifies its author to anyone who knows who was on call.
Tell your team this plainly when you launch. Encourage people to describe patterns rather than single incidents if they want to stay unidentifiable, or to switch on Show my name when they're happy to be known. Many people are, once they see replies arriving.
Explaining it to your team
A short version you can paste into your launch message:
What happens to your answers. Scores only show for groups of three or more. Comments go to your team's managers without your name, and they only see the week you wrote them. If your team has fewer than five people, they go to leadership instead, without your team's name. Admins who set the tool up don't see answers. Your name only appears if you choose to show it. One caution: details only you would know can still point to you.
Sources and limits
These rules are Pulsido's, as documented in How confidentiality works on 7 November 2026. They're fixed: no setting loosens them. Surveys that show names are marked as such before anyone starts, and named answers are visible to whoever reads that survey's results.