In this article:
Anonymity is essential when it comes to employee engagement surveys. For that reason, the anonimity of employees is a ccore principle in Dialog. This means that some results may be hidden in the platform. When this happens, the platform will explain why this happens.
This article explains how anonimity is ensured in Dialog, along with some illustrative examples.
Anonymity rules
You can analyze the results of an engagement survey based on different segments. As an organization, you can choose which segments to use. The following segments are available:
- Teams
- Positions
- Gender
- Age
- Employment duration
Note: The more segments you use, the more groups you can compare. This increases the likelihood that certain results will be hidden.
To ensure anonymity, we apply four rules that must be met for results to be displayed:
Minimum of 5 participants – Results are only shown when there are at least 5 employees in a group.
Minimum of 5 responses – Results are only shown when at least 5 employees in a group have answered the survey.
Protecting smaller groups – Results from a segment may be hidden to protect a smaller group, even if the first segment has more than 5 respondents.
Protecting overlapping groups – Results may be hidden if one segment overlaps too much with another segment, risking individual anonymity.
Tooltips and Additional Explanations
- Icons and tooltips are used within the platform to indicate which rule is being applied. Clicking on a field provides a detailed explanation of why certain results are hidden.
- When results are hidden, you also won’t see how many employees from that segment completed the survey. The responses are not lost, but are included in higher-level results.
- Below are several examples illustrating these rules in more detail.
Rule 1 – Minimum of 5 Participants
There must be at least 5 employees in a group in order to display that group’s results. For groups (for example, a team) with fewer than 5 people, the results are never shown.
When this rule applies in the platform, this is indicated by a tooltip. Clicking on the cell will show a more detailed explanation.
Rule 2 – Minimum of 5 Responses
At least 5 employees from a group must have completed the survey in order to display that group’s results. If this is not the case, the responses from that group are hidden.
When this rule applies in the platform, this is indicated by a tooltip. Clicking on the cell will show a more detailed explanation.
Rule 3 - Protecting Smaller Segments
Smarter calculation rule
We have improved the logic behind this rule (effective by default from 2 February 2026). We now assess proportions more intelligently, meaning larger groups are less often hidden unnecessarily:
When do we show the scores?
When a specific (protected) group is small relative to the total (≤ 10%), but the total group is large enough (> 19 employees).
The result:
You see more results in your heatmap and the dashboard is clearer, while privacy remains safeguarded because the total group is large enough to mask individual responses.
In this video, you will find a detailed explanation of this change and its impact on your dashboard.
If a segment does not meet the criteria, the following rules apply
Results from a segment with more than 5 respondents may still be hidden in order to protect one or more smaller segments. This is indicated by the anonymity icon.
See the scenario below;
The results for ‘Inbound Sales’ are hidden because there are not enough employees in this team (Rule 1).
The results for the 'Marketing' team are also hidden. Not because there are insufficient respondents, but to protect the results of the employee in the ‘Inbound Sales’ team and the employee in ‘Marketing & Sales’.
You already know the results for ‘Marketing & Sales’ as a whole and the results for ‘Outbound Sales’. If you were also to know the results for Marketing, you could deduce what the employee from ‘Inbound Sales’ and the employee from ‘Marketing & Sales’ answered.
This explanation is also shown when you click on the heatmap cell in the platform.
Be aware: Users with the super administrator role have access to more insights. This can result in fewer results being shown in the heatmap in order to maintain anonymity.
- If you have access to multiple teams, some results may be hidden to protect smaller segments.
Protecting smaller segments: team "Remaining"
You may also see the team 'Remaining' displayed in the heatmap. In this view, the results are shown for teams where one or more teams have fewer than 5 participants.
This explanation is also shown when you click on the icon in the cell.
Rule 4 - Protecting Overlapping Segments
Example 1
Results from a segment with more than 5 respondents may be hidden because it overlaps too much with another segment. See the scenario below. When this rule applies, it is indicated in the tooltip.
The results for Customer Support are hidden because they overlap too much with the results of the higher-level team ‘Customer Support Team Lead’. The results at this level consist of 10 Customer Support employees plus the team lead — 11 employees in total.
If you were to know both the 10 results from Customer Support and the results of the 11 employees at the higher level, you could directly deduce what the team lead responded.
When you click on the icon, you will see the results of the overlapping segment, as those results are largely the same (in this example, a difference of 1).
Example 2
Overlap can also occur across different segments. For example, results for a specific age group may be hidden to protect results from a group within the Length of service segment. See the following scenario, where results are analysed by age group.
The results for the 20–29 age group are hidden to protect another group because there is too much overlap between these groups. When you click on the cell, you will see an explanation of which group is being protected, in this case, employees who have been employed for less than 6 months.
- The 6 employees aged 20–29 are all also employed for less than 6 months.
- In the <6 months employed group, there are 9 employees in total, 7 of whom completed the survey.
- The difference between these groups is 3 employees, which does not meet the anonymity threshold of 5 participants.
If you were to know the results of both groups, it could be possible to deduce what one of these 3 employees responded.