HR accidentally sends entire company the results of employees' engagement survey, leading all employees to read through the unfiltered feedback: ‘There were very pointed remarks about management’

Author image for Bar Mor Hazut
Bar Mor Hazut • Senior Editor
Jun 10, 2026 10:30 AM EDT

On which occasions is it okay to leave a genuinely honest review?

You might think that if someone asks you for your feedback on something, they expect you to be honest with the review you give back. And in most cases, that is the truth. When you leave a Google or Yelp review on a business, or share your ratings for a product you used, you want to be as honest and true as possible. Not just so that others will learn from your experience, but so that those who can improve from the review can actually do so.

However, one scenario in which your honest review can be used against you is in your workplace, and stories like the one below might make you think twice before you honestly tell your employer what you think about their business.

There are plenty of opportunities for an employee to tell their employers what they think they could do to improve. Whether it is during a personal meeting, a yearly review, or through one of those engagement surveys HR likes to send out, while promising the results are completely anonymous. And for a moment there, it might be tempting to use one of these opportunities to give your workplace some helpful criticism that might help them improve.

Before you do that, just know that these things can and will be used against you.

Whether that's the case for the employees below remains to be seen. All they know is that they filled out the anonymous survey as honestly as possible, then discovered that HR accidentally sent a company-wide email with everyone's unfilted replies to the same survey. It wasn't long before everyone in the company got to read what each one of them had to say about management and leadership, something that was supposed to stay completely private… It didn't take much to figure out which employee said what about whom, and it wasn't exactly pretty.

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  • 01
    An office full of employees working, represented by models.
    via israelandrxde

    An office full of employees working, represented by models.

  • 02

    Our company did an anonymous engagement survey and then accidentally sent everyone the unfiltered results and I don’t think leadership realised what they’d done for about three hours

    So every six months we do one of these internal surveys, standard stuff, rate your manager, rate the culture, open text boxes for comments. We're
    via cuteyasmine
  • 03
    always told the results are reviewed by HR and then key themes are shared back with the wider team in a sanitised summary. That's how it's always worked.
    via cuteyasmine
  • 04
    Last Tuesday someone in HR hit the wrong button or misconfigured something in the survey platform and the full export, every single response including all the open text
    via cuteyasmine
  • 05
    comments, went out to the entire company mailing list as an attachment. All 84 employees got it simultaneously. For about three hours nobody
    via cuteyasmine
  • 06
    think that's because whoever sent it didn't immediately realise what had gone out. In that window our internal Slack was completely silent in a way it never normally is at 10am on
    via cuteyasmine
  • 07
    a Tuesday which told me everyone was doing exactly what I was doing, sitting very quietly at their desk reading through the whole thing. The comments were something
    via cuteyasmine
  • 08
    else. Not because they were shocking exactly but because of the specific detail people go into when they genuinely believe nobody will trace it back to them. There were very
    via cuteyasmine
  • 09
    pointed remarks about specific management behaviours, named processes that people found patronising, and one comment about a particular senior leader that was so
    via cuteyasmine
  • 10
    precise and so accurate that half the office probably knew immediately who wrote it even without a name attached.
    via cuteyasmine
  • 11
    HR sent a recall notice about three hours later followed by an apology email saying it was sent in error and asking people to delete it.
    via cuteyasmine
  • 12
    The thing about a recall notice is that it mostly just reminds people to save the attachment before it stops working
    via cuteyasmine
  • 13
    A group of people working on their laptops.
    via Annie Spratt

    A group of people working on their laptops.

  • 14
    whynousernamelef Those things are never truly anonymous.
    via whynousernamelef
  • 15
    Illustrious-Dot-5968 Just shows that in answering a survey never assume that you are anonymous, no matter what the survey administrators claim.
    via Illustrious-Dot-5968
  • 16
    People who cannot handle technology should not be in their jobs. There should have been double and triple checks before disseminating such sensitive information.
    via Illustrious-Dot-5968
  • 17
    Do you think that mistaken release was a net benefit to the company or that it was damaging. Interested in this. Hope you post a follow up.
    via Illustrious-Dot-5968
  • 18
    HalfBeating Heart I remember doing one and my comment was about our specific dept not being included on receiving a copy of the CEO's new book. Lo and behold several days later I get one, not the whole dept,
    via HalfBeatingHeart
  • 19
    just me. I still didn't read it, I was just kinda ill our dept always got ignored by corporate except for scrutiny. Also I guess it was a good thing they did the survey before the ceo was on the show Undercover Boss
    via HalfBeatingHeart
  • 20
    because there woulda been a s' ton more comments for them to sift through.
    via HalfBeatingHeart
  • 21
    Ok-Charge-9091 Op, did you hear anything about a HR person or persons who have suddenly left their job?
    via Ok-Charge-9091

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reviews boss workplace-stories employee hr manager job ceo overworked-employees workplace company survey
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