How does Effectory safeguard confidentiality?

Confidentiality and group size

To ensure that answers cannot be traced back to individual participants, Effectory will only report average group scores for groups that have 5 or more respondents. In some cases, employers decide to increase this minimum group size, usually between five and ten employees (five is the absolute minimum). This minimum group size of five respondents is the general standard for conducting employee surveys, for Effectory as well as for other suppliers working in compliance with privacy laws. Effectory externally conducts a Privacy Impact Assessment. If a group does not meet the minimum requirements, we will not report the results for this group. As a result of these measures, we can guarantee that your answers cannot be traced back to you in the results. Please note that answers to open-ended questions will be quoted literally but anonymously (it is not indicated who gave the answer) in the reports.

Certified secure data handling

Effectory operates in compliance with the highest security levels in receiving, processing and storing data. Effectory is ISO 27001 certified (security), ISO 27002 (all security controls included), ISO 27701 certified (privacy management), and SOC 2 Type II certified. These are worldwide standards on information security and privacy management. Of course, Effectory also works in accordance with European privacy laws (GDPR).

Response rate per group & report

In addition to group size, we always agree on the minimum number of required respondents. This is the minimum number of participants in a group that must have completed the questionnaire (which can never be below 5). If this requirement is not met, the results of this group will not be reported at the specific group level and will instead be included in a parent group that has reached the minimum – usually the department or organization. For groups that do not meet the minimum response rate required, but have at least 3 respondents, our dashboard will show limited insights to give an indication of how a team is performing without showing actual scores.

Exception

If you are a manager, the results from your department might say something directly about you as a manager. In that sense, you as a manager will be assessed personally.

Answers to open-ended questions

Answers to open-ended questions for groups with less than 5 respondents will be reported with the results of the parent group. For users of the dashboard that have access to such a group these answers to open-ended questions might not be visible (depending on their access rights). In My Feedback (where every respondent can view their own answers a compare them with their team and the organization as a whole) these individuals will be able to see all answers to open-ended questions of the parent group. In all cases, it will not be visible from which group an answer to open-ended question is coming (also not when included in a parent group).

Data segmentation

Data segmentation refer to data slices based demographic variables to give additional insights. For example, to show the differences between men and women or age categories. To report this, Effectory treats data segmentation as a group with the 5/5 rule (min. 5 participants / min. 5 respondents) per characteristic. Answers to open-ended questions are never reported for these groups. Furthermore, percentage questions (questions where not an average is calculated but the answers are reported as percentages), will not be shown. Lastly, data segmentation may only be provided on one level within one structure. Only data segmentation with more than 2 categories may be added to the lowest level of a structure.

Multiple structures

Some matrix organizations wish to report results on multiple structures (e.g., functional and geographical). When dealing with multiple structures, Effectory takes extra measures to ensure that confidentiality will still be guaranteed. Therefore, data segmentation (demographic variables for insight into variables such as gender) will only be reported in one structure at one level maximum within that structure (for example on functional structure, level 2: department). In addition, answers to open-ended questions will only be reported at one structure. Lastly, when reporting in multiple structures: we advise to report higher-level groups such as departments, business units or regions instead of lower-level groups such as teams.

Please find a summary of all business rules per topic below: