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Privacy and anonymity

This notice explains what Peers stores, who sees what, and what cannot be found out about your answers.

In one sentence: when you submit a teammate’s review, ratings and text are encrypted and not linked to you; all that remains is the record that you finished.

What the person who created the team does not see

  • Who gave which rating to whom.
  • Who wrote each free-text answer.
  • The order or time in which each person answered.
  • Any individual answer before the result — not on the screen, not through the browser tools, and not by guessing a link.

This also applies to whoever manages the Peers database.

What the person who created the team sees

  • Who was invited and, for each person, only the situation (invitation not accepted, pending or finished), when the invitation was sent and accepted, when the last email went out, and whether one was not delivered.
  • Once everyone has finished, the combined result: the ranking by score, the average per pillar and per question, the self-review compared with teammates’ reviews, and the free-text answers for each person reviewed, without identifying who wrote them.

What each participant sees

If the person who created the team releases the teammates’ report — to everyone at the same time, with an email letting them know —, each participant sees only their own: the overall score and the score per pillar, the self-review compared with teammates’ reviews, the team average per pillar as a reference, and the texts they received. They do not see their own position in the ranking or who wrote each text.

Texts appear exactly as they were written, without translation.

The manager review

  • Besides the teammates’ review, the person who created the team can review each person as a manager. This review is not anonymous: the manager is the one reviewing.
  • In it, the manager records the score for each goal and each competency, a comment and the potential answers, which place each person in a box of the 9-box grid. The manager sees all of this.
  • You see the manager feedback once it is released: the score for each goal and each competency, with the scale of phrases, the overall performance score and the comment. The potential and the 9-box grid stay with the manager.
  • Deleting the team or the round erases its manager review.

Artificial intelligence

Free-text answers from the teammates’ review are never sent to any artificial intelligence. AI is used to suggest the pillars from the culture text written by the person who created the team and to write and translate the questions; and, in the manager review, to suggest the goals and competencies from the team description, write the scale phrases for each one and, when the manager asks, suggest a paragraph for a person’s comment, using only their first name and the scores and phrases the manager gave — never the potential, the 9-box grid or anything from the teammates. What the AI suggests, the person who created the team reviews before using it.

Legal basis and roles

The data is processed on the basis of the legitimate interest of the person who creates the team: assessing how the team lives its own culture.

  • The person who creates the team and invites people is the data controller.
  • Peers (IB Labs) is the processor: it handles the data only to carry out the review.

That is why there is no consent checkbox: this notice appears on your first visit so that you know how your answers are handled.

What data Peers handles

The name and email of each participant, provided by the person who created the team; the preferred language; the answers (ratings and free-text answers); the record of who has finished; and, in the manager review, the scores, the comment and the potential the manager records about each person. There is a single purpose: the team’s review, by teammates and by the manager.

Your rights

To access, correct or delete your data, contact the person who created the team, who is the controller. That person can delete the team in Peers at any time, and deleting it erases all of the team’s data. Your Peers account (your name, email, preferred language, when you closed this notice and your last access) stays.

Emails from Peers are automatic and do not accept replies.

How long the data is kept

There is no automatic deletion after a set period: the team’s data stays until the person who created it deletes it, and deleting it erases the team’s data right away. Database backups expire on their own within 2 days.

The remaining risk

While the review is open, the draft and the submitted answers are encrypted with a key kept outside the database, and the database backups only contain encrypted text. The remaining risk, stated plainly: someone who operates the platform and held, at the same time, that key and a copy of the database made before the result could, in theory, link a draft to the person writing it.

There is a second risk, which depends not on who operates the platform but on who creates the teams: if the same person opens two teams with almost the same people and the same questions, the difference between the two results may make it possible to estimate the score someone gave or received. The minimum number of people per team does not prevent this. Peers does not restrict that use; it states it.

The same applies to two reviews of the same team, one after the other: if the people and the questions barely change, the difference between the two results may make it possible to estimate the score someone gave or received. Someone who operates the platform and reads the database can do that calculation more precisely, score by score. Peers does not restrict that use; it states it.

There is also a limit that no technical rule closes: anonymity among teammates assumes that each participant is a person other than the one who created the team, who answers for themselves and does not pass their answers on. In a team of the minimum size (3 people, or 4 when the person who created the team also takes part), a single participant who is not a separate person, or who passes on what they answered to the person who created the team, is enough for the averages and the texts of the result to stop being anonymous for the others. Peers does not check who is behind each invited email address; it states it.