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If it’s not anonymous what good is it? Anyone can lie. What do they expect to gain from it?

Well, it would have the effect of forcing people to submit. It reminds me of the story told by some old Soviet-era guy (don't remember who), who said that the thing he hated most about the Soviet Union was the Lie. His example: a group of people in a room consisting of a Party member, the old guy, and others listening. The Party member would say "The Soviet Union has the happiest people on earth" and everyone in the room would nod in agreement, even though the old guy knew it was a lie, all the others listening knew it was a lie, and the Party member who said it knew it was a lie. But truth wasn't allowed, and the Party flaunted its power by forcing upon everyone the humiliation of submitting to the lie.

I just took a similar survey, it sounds like, from an international fast food restaurant chain, and it was also not anonymous, which made me wonder the same thing. Some employees might have gotten the idea it was anonymous because they didn’t tell us it wasn’t, but it was done by computer and they gave us each of us a “password” which was a unique code, I noticed. Some questions were pretty invasive, like how long you expect to work for them, but nothing like the LGBT questions.

On why it isn’t anonymous, if you think about it, it can’t be. There are certainly people who would make up things, and false accusations against other workers could wreak a lot of havoc and open them to liability. So the survey isn’t anonymous, but it may help them get some sense of what is happening throughout the company and possibly point to some problems. It also might say a lot about the employee, too. That’s the sense I got from it.