Send topics instead of your words

A blank comment box is often a trust problem, not a lack of opinions. People know their manager could recognise how they write. So on InviziPoll polls, every comment question gives you a second way to answer: send the topics, keep the words.

#For respondents: how it works

Under each comment box you'll see two choices:

• Leadership can read my words. This is selected unless you change it. Your answer is read word for word, shuffled in with everyone else's and without a date.
• Only send topics, not my words. Your words stay on your device. You pick what gets sent instead.

If you choose topics:

1. Write as much or as little as you like. As you type, your browser suggests topics from what you wrote. Suggestions never include numbers or anything that looks like a name or a place.
2. Pick up to five topics. Tap a suggestion to add it, tap again to drop it, or choose from a short list of common ones: workload, pay, benefits, management, leadership, communication, recognition, career growth, training, flexibility, work-life balance, tools and equipment, safety, culture, teamwork, fairness, staffing, scheduling, processes and wellbeing. You can't type a topic of your own, so nobody can slip a sentence back in as a "topic".
3. Add a tone if you want. Positive, mixed or negative. It's optional.
4. Check what you're sending. Before you submit, you see exactly what leadership will get, for example "Leadership will get: workload, scheduling · tone: negative."
5. Submit. Only the topics you picked are encrypted and sent. What you typed is thrown away.

If the question is required, pick at least one topic.

#What leadership sees

Topics are counted across everyone, never shown per person:

• A topic shows only once at least 2 people picked it.
• The topic list for a question shows only once at least 5 people answered it with topics. Before that, leadership sees how many people chose topics and nothing else.
• Counts arrive in the same groups as every other answer, never one at a time.

Topic counts appear in the poll's results and its downloads. They never appear in group breakdowns, shared slices for managers, published results or the on-device AI summary.

#What it doesn't hide

We'd rather tell you this than have you find it out. Your admin's browser unlocks each answer to count the topics. A determined, technical admin could see the topics one person picked, alongside that person's other answers. They can never see your words, because your words were never sent.

So topics protect how you write. They don't make a rare topic in a small team invisible. If you're one of two people who'd pick "safety", the floors above are what protect you, and you can always leave a question blank.

#Where it isn't offered

• Speak-up polls. Those exist so one person's report can be read and followed up.
• Word cloud questions. Those answers are already one to a few words.
• Polls where the admin turned it off. It's on by default.

If the poll lets leadership reply to answers, choosing topics shows "Leadership can't reply to a topics-only answer." There's nothing to reply to.

#For admins: the setting

New polls offer topics on every comment question by default, on every plan. To turn it off for a poll, open the poll builder's Distribution step and switch off Let people send topics instead of their words under Comments. It's there for people who otherwise wouldn't write anything, so think twice before switching it off.

You'll get fewer word-for-word comments when people use it. That's the trade, and it's theirs to make: nothing is pre-selected, so an answer is readable unless the person chooses otherwise. The Anonymity Coach mentions the choice on the Demographics and Review steps, and the ballot's protection checklist tells respondents it's there.

#FAQ

#Related

• Open text questions
• The poll protection checklist
• Viewing results
• Respondent anonymity and zero telemetry