My manager called a team meeting for the tool to submit anonymous feedback upwards
We were told that our feedback was “too negative” and that we needed to be more positive going forward or else comp would be impacted.
There are already tons of rumors circulating about the future of the Boston office for ops. This just added to the stress.
@pq Correct about the non-anonymous to even less anonymous the last couple of years. But mgrs can't see number scores. They can ask the HRBP to pull, I guess, but that's extremely rare. If HR looks at that to determine the next heads to roll or target someone specific, that may be, but they don't look under general circumstances.
As for comments. for most line managers it's really easy to guess who made the comment. Especially if you have a small team, you can often surmise who gave the low scores because Peakon shows the distribution.
@OP I have an outlook rule — those go straight to the trash.
From what I've been told by-way-of senior leadership, the Peakon surveys were never anonymous, and about 2-years ago changes were implemented to make these surveys less so.
Again, from what I've been told, your direct management / leadership knows what you submit for scoring and comments.
When I worked at BNY, I escalated my concerns of a mismanaged department to The People Team (when these surveys seemed useless). During this episode, I received a small win when People Team recognized my department leadership were either poorly trained for their roles or lacked the necessary experience to hold their respective positions. It was undetermined by People Team if the failures were one of both the last we spoke, but PT agreed there were concerns with department management.
Ultimately, BNY senior leadership "moved" my department management swiftly and laterally to other functions within line-of-business.
Given how BNY was "layoff happy" during 2024 and 2025, had instructed leadership to reduce staff by 10%, create questionable PIP reviews and the like... it was surprising to see senior leadership rally around failed department management.
Which leads me to believe the failures and mismanagement of business went high enough to try and cover the department melee.
So yes, the Peakon surveys at BNY and both useless and not anonymous. While People Team can make suggestions and forward information for claims of misconduct to appropriate Directors for review and investigation.
@m9 its not hard sometimes to figure out who makes comments . your mgr might also have no clue and just be trying to figure out who did.
The Peakon surveys are NOT anonymous. I have all zeros and even made comments “the management deserves zeros.” The next day, my manager looked me dead in the eye and said “you know- I feel like a real zero today” and walked away. He then turned around and said “if you know you know.” —!!!!!!!!!
So what, give 10/10 and everyone in the org gets a 1% raise? No. Wouldn't happen anyway.
Manager just doesn't want to do the extra work of his/her manager (and so on) to do the impossible task of raising morale. Rate and objective providebfeedback, including, "Despite directives to misrepresent reality...."
Great that you all are passing along your true and accurate viewpoints of the company and your management. However, if you need to keep your job, you must play the game and gaslight the sh*t out of your management team, just like they are doing to you all. When I worked at the bank I used Peakon as a tool to fill in short comings of my own as a manager or do my best to change policy. Peakon has now been we-ponized. Learn to use the we-pon in an offensive posture, or it will be turned upon you as such. Stay strong!
Peaking is not anonymous.
As soon as I started being honest and providing the low ratings, I was laid off.
I wish I had never agreed to a package. This POS company needs to pay dearly for all the dishonesty it has done to the employees. All of HR should be held accountable, and batman and Robin should be ousted.
I used to rate everything a zero lol. Got laid off last year - that’s probably why
@er What?! Feedback is feedback. There are no correct answers! What difference does it make as to why you need to correct materially 'incorrect' answers?
If you represent the People Team, please report who gave you direction to be on this social media to clarify and explain your role?
Also, If you are committed to ethical business practices relating to the survey methods, the survey instrument would truly be anonymous and there would be no feedback attribution period. What are your thoughts and why is HR leadership silent on this point???
I’m not down with the brainwashing. I am VERY honest in my feedback rating 0’s where deserved. I know my manager knows which are my comments and I don’t care. I will not be suppressed. I will not be strong armed into submission. This is how communist parties and dictatorships come to be. When everyone is brainwashed to stop speaking up, then what dignity do we have left? If I’m going down, I’ll always go down swinging.
lol. I did one of those surveys when they first started and never again. And if I have to rate anything even if it’s training courses I always give the equivalent of a meets expectations. If I can’t get better than that neither can anything this company does.
I’m from the People Team. We correct glaring errors and other issues in Peakon feedback. If there are glaring errors of a material nature we will contact submitter and work with them to understand and reinforce the correct answers, sometimes employees are resisting and we have to do a course correction and or one on one teaching.
Thankfully, I no longer work for the dump, but I still check this site from time to time
My old manager told us to please fill out the surveys when we’re in a good mood because there had been some negative responses.
Of course, I continued to state the truth on them. I would then get supposedly anonymous responses back from my manager’s manager, saying they would like to discuss my concerns and responses.
I never did… Just responded back that there’s no reason to discuss it because they know what the issues are and don’t care
Post ID: @cx+1kn2japmd
That’s the end state model. It’s why we are being replaced by them.
Nothing new, we were told this over a year ago. Scores of 5, 6, and 7 are thrown out, so score everything 8 and above. Management does not care about Peakon. Or us.
If that's managements objective, why dont they just have the survey completed by 42, Eliza, people in India and "digital employees?"
My manager told us the same thing in the meeting. We’re supposed to fill everything out with all 10s. She explicitly said that nobody cares about the comments, and that low scores make upper management see employees at that location as complainers. She also confirmed that in India, managers stand over you while you fill out Peakon, and they end up with practically 100% positive surveys. She said she doesn’t want to do that, and asked us to skip any questions where we would want to give a negative rating.
@be I’m pretty sure that a score of “0” would express your unhappiness more and is a more accurate reflection of the current “culture” at BNY!
@ap we had a manager tell us that a score of “7” is a bad score so if we were unhappy that’s the score we should use.
Yes emperor, your clothes look fantastic. Very stylish. Although your pen*s is exceedingly small (which is probably why you need all that positive reinforcement).
Former BNY employee here. Global Payments and Treasury Services alum. We had similar requests during 2023. We were asked to increase our submissions of flattering thoughts and opinions and tone down our negative comments directed towards leadership.
My peers stopped submitting surveys after these multiple requests. As a department we had specific scheduled meetings to talk about improving our survey feedback. No meetings schedualed to actually address the concerns from staff that prompted the negative feedback. Anyway, the ask from management did have an effect. BNY staff elected to ignore these surveys rather than write positive mistruths.
BNY is not a real firm.
Absolutely ridiculous, defeats the purpose, and akin to George Orwell's "Animal Farm".
If they are insisting on lies being "truth", then the only logical response would be for everyone to submit the following, for "anonymous" feedback:
A link to "Animal Farm" itself: https://dn710604.ca.archive.org/0/items/AnimalFarmByGeorgeOrwell/Animal%20Farm%20by%20George%20Orwell.pdf
Along with a Wiki summarization of its premise, for "leadership" personnel who are too lazy (and insufficiently educated during their formative years) to read it all the way through: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm
@OP
Current leadership and HR Business Practices in this case are highly questionable and the upward communication process appears to be broken. In healthy, well-managed organizations, HR Business Practices and Peakon survey actions must:
1. Reinforce the Purpose of Upward Feedback
Upward feedback exists to surface issues, identify risks, and improve leadership effectiveness. It is not a loyalty test, a positivity contest, or a disguised performance metric.
A formal response should emphasize:
• The intent of anonymous feedback tools is to gather accurate sentiment, not curated sentiment.
• Constructive criticism is essential for organizational health, risk mitigation, and employee retention.
• Penalizing honesty undermines the integrity of the process and erodes trust.
2. Survey Respondents Should Request Clarification in Writing
A professional, non‑confrontational request should be made to HR or management:
• Ask whether feedback is truly anonymous.
• Ask whether compensation decisions are being tied to sentiment scores.
• Request documentation of any policy linking feedback tone to performance or pay.
This creates accountability and discourages retaliatory behavior.
3. Recommend Leadership Training
If leadership is reacting defensively to feedback, the appropriate corrective action is not to silence employees — it is to strengthen leaders’ ability to receive and act on feedback.
Recommend:
• Psychological safety training
• Ethical leadership development
• Coaching on how to interpret and respond to employee sentiment
4. Encourage HR to Reassess the Process
HR should be advised to:
• Reaffirm anonymity
• Reevaluate how feedback is aggregated and communicated
• Ensure no punitive measures are tied to employee honesty
This protects both employees and the organization.
@OP
Ethical Assessment
Are the requests from senior leadership and direct managment ethical?
No.
The directives are ethically problematic for several reasons:
1. Coercion
Telling employees to “be more positive or compensation will be impacted” is coercive. It we-ponizes pay to control speech.
2. Retaliation Risk
Linking honest feedback to negative consequences violates fundamental HR ethics and, in some cases, may violate internal policies on retaliation.
3. False Anonymity
If feedback is truly anonymous, management should not be able to attribute sentiment to individuals.
If they can, the process is misrepresented.
4. Psychological Safety Breakdown
Employees cannot provide meaningful feedback in an environment where honesty is punished. This undermines:
5. Manipulation of Data
Pressuring employees to submit artificially positive feedback corrupts the data leadership relies on to make decisions.
This is not only unethical — it is operationally dangerous.
@a5 i have seen same thing..HRBP will call and ask us to fix the feedback so that its positive next time. its all fake,
@OP The team meeting was supposed to be about submitting anonymous upward feedback — a chance for employees to speak honestly about leadership, workload, and the growing uncertainty surrounding the Boston operations office. Instead, it became something very different. Management informed the group that their feedback was “too negative” and instructed everyone to be “more positive going forward,” adding that compensation could be affected if sentiment didn’t improve. The message was unmistakable: honesty was acceptable only if it was flattering.
The impact was immediate. Employees already anxious about persistent rumors now faced a new pressure — the fear that telling the truth could cost them financially. What was framed as a feedback tool suddenly felt like surveillance disguised as engagement.
From an ethical standpoint, the request is deeply problematic. Tying compensation to the tone of anonymous feedback undermines psychological safety, discourages transparency, and borders on coercion. It also contradicts the stated purpose of upward feedback, which is to surface issues leadership needs to address, not suppress.
In a moment when trust is already fragile, this approach erodes it further. Ethical leadership requires creating space for candid input, not penalizing it. If anything needs adjusting, it’s not the employees’ honesty — it’s the organization’s response to it. The management request is not ethical, not aligned with best HR practices, and not conducive to a healthy culture.