When I was working at Cisco, HR announced that a major company survey would be taking place and that it was important for everyone to be as honest and as frank as possible. We were told that the survey would be “100% Anonymous and 100% Confidential” and that the results would never be disclosed. They wanted honest feedback to make changes. It seems like the actions of a company seriously intent on doing right by the company and the employees.
At the time I was working on the East Coast office as the result of an acquisition and since Cisco is a San Jose company, the West Coast got the surveys first. The surveys were very long and very detailed and there were many, many opportunities where the employee was asked for a detailed opinion, not just a multiple choice answer. The company was adamant every survey be taken by every employee and there were incentives and implied threats to make it happen.
Then my boss came back from a meeting on the West Coast. He was shaken. His job was as a senior director and as such he was privy to many secrets the rest of us never heard. It’s a critical position to have and the company imbues the holder with a great deal of trust. The pay is very high and the perks enormous. But the other side is there as well. Directors who can’t be trusted are not long for the company and information is power. Our director told us on the sly not to say anything but positive answers on the survey. At first we thought he was joking - the survey was anonymous. The company had 40,000 employees. How could they pin one survey down to a single person? And anyway, how would our managers ever know since the survey was being handled by HR.
“They aren’t anonymous,” he whispered, “They just want you to think that. They know who is responding and what they are saying. We just sat around a big table and discussed what the people in our groups were saying. It was grim as hell. Your turn is next week. When the survey comes around just say what you think they want to hear and the less the better. They’re going to use that information and not for the good of the workers, trust me.”
This wasn’t the first time we had caught Cisco doing nefarious things. They were experts at the “iron fist in the velvet glove” routine, dissimulating to the employee whenever they thought it was necessary, always with a smile, but lying nevertheless. For example, every acquired company was supposed to be brought up to uniform salary standards - but they never did it. Managers who were making “x” on the West Coast were always paid more than those on the East Coast or those from acquired companies. When pushed, they angrily told us to “move on” and stop asking. Parity, as far as we could tell, was never achieved and people in different regions got different salary levels regardless of skill and achievement.
In any case, when the surveys came around we looked at them with suspicion. They were complex and professionally made. It’s not hard to put tags on anything so that it can be tracked and the promise that it was anonymous was a lie. The information was being collected to be used against us, not to improve Cisco, unless by “improve” you mean “get rid of malcontents”. Soon, the rumor spread around the company that the survey was queered. People were livid. HR started putting out defensive emails denying that the surveys were anything but anonymous. Eventually, filling them out got to be a joke. We would sit around in a room and pass them around and make up outlandish answers. When management got word that this was taking place they were livid. When finally caught red-handed, a VP said it “s---ed that people found out”, not that it “s---ed that Cisco was doing something underhanded”. No more surveys were done after that and it began a major shift in the Cisco corporate culture from a place where everybody pulled the same rope to make lots of money to a place where everybody had to watch their back. I am sure this happens in all companies when they reach a certain size. I was just saddened that it happened at the company I most respected in the world and had hoped to retire from one day. As it happens, the circle was completed later. I didn’t get the chance to retire from Cisco. After loudly complaining about a well-managed plan to shortchange customers by foisting a non-working solution on them at top dollar, I was let go. Sh-- happens. As the song says, “From the penthouse apartment, to the rats in the basement - it’s not that far.”