The survey I'm imagining is just "rate the progress of project X from 1 to 10 (1 being just started, 10 being complete)"[0], and also "rate your happiness from

The survey I'm imagining is just "rate the progress of project X from 1 to 10 (1 being just started, 10 being complete)"[0], and also "rate your happiness from 1 to 10", and "rate the quality of the work done from 1 to 10". This would be anonymous, the only thing that wouldn't be anonymous is whether or not an employee has updated their survey within the last 2 weeks. I would absolutely throw that hypothetical lower-tier manager you mentioned under the bus. The surveys could have a "rate your manager 1 to 10" question too. I think it would be valuable insight to all levels of management. If the team is being death marched, happiness and quality surveys would drop. Or, if you see a team deliver a buggy project, but quality surveys were high all throughout development, then you could tell that the team was incompetent and hire/fire/train accordingly. [0]: Don't ask people to guess completion dates, have them guess percent completed and then calculate completion dates in the software.