Use case
Confidential employee feedback
Employee feedback fails when people answer for the record. Fieldwork runs confidential AI-moderated conversations: Sofi asks follow-ups when answers stay vague, surfaces themes across the organisation, and gives leadership an honest read on change without putting individuals on the spot in a group forum.
Why engagement surveys under-deliver on honesty
Employees know surveys are traceable, even when labelled anonymous. Sensitive answers compress into neutral scores. Open text fills with safe language. Leaders see a green dashboard and still hear a different story in skip-level conversations.
Fieldwork scales the skip-level conversation. Participants respond on their own time. Sofi probes without judgment and without a manager in the room.
When do teams run employee feedback interviews?
During restructures, when rumours outrun official communications. After a policy change, when compliance is visible but sentiment is not. During transformation programmes, when project teams need to know which workstreams actually slowed down.
Before annual planning, when leadership wants a grounded read on capacity and morale, not only financial forecasts.
What this looks like in practice
A company announces a restructure that merges two product teams. All-hands explains the logic; engagement survey scores barely move. HR suspects anxiety but cannot name the blocker.
People team launches a confidential conversation study: what employees understand about the change, what they are unsure about, and what would help them work effectively in the new shape. Links go out over a week; Sofi completes dozens of sessions without scheduling a single calendar block.
Themes show clarity is not the main issue; role overlap with legacy titles is. Managers get talking points grounded in aggregated quotes. HR adjusts the communication plan before attrition spikes in the merged teams.
What should HR consider before launching?
Align with legal and works council requirements in your jurisdiction. Communicate purpose, confidentiality boundaries, and voluntary participation clearly in the invite.
Review the generated study plan before fielding. Sensitive topics benefit from careful wording and a neutral participant-facing title. See the security overview for data handling practices and discuss enterprise options if procurement requires them.
Frequently asked questions
Are employee conversations anonymous?
Fieldwork is designed for confidential feedback programmes where individual attribution is not the goal. Researchers see session identifiers, not employee names, in standard workflows. HR teams should align study design and communications with their internal privacy policy and any works council requirements.
How is this different from an engagement survey?
Surveys invite defensive answers on sensitive topics. A conversation lets Sofi probe when someone says leadership is "fine" or change is "okay" and surface the concern behind the polite response, without putting an employee in a live room with HR.
What topics fit employee feedback interviews?
Change programmes, restructures, return-to-office policy, manager effectiveness, and culture health checks. Brief Sofi on the decision leadership needs to make, not every possible HR theme in one wave.
Who typically runs these studies?
People and culture teams, HR business partners, and internal communications leads. Some organisations involve an external facilitator to review the study plan while Fieldwork runs execution.
What output does leadership receive?
Aggregated themes, representative quotes without identifiers, and topic coverage showing where answers stayed guarded. That package supports leadership conversations without exposing individual sessions by default.
Next steps: Fieldwork Interviews, security overview, and customer feedback conversations.