Why does Viva Glint generally recommend a minimum size of 5 for reporting?

While lowering the threshold might increase the number of people with reports, the quality of data and interpretation would be significantly compromised for those managers. 

 

The key issue here is when you reduce the number of people you're aggregating over, slight shifts/variations in responses can make what is actually a small difference more prominent than it should be. We believe that making decisions based on such unreliable data will be more harmful than helpful.

We also don't recommend lowering the minimum group size for reporting below 5 because it would jeopardize the confidentiality we are trying to protect for employees.

As a team of People Scientists, we often advise leaders who do not meet the reporting requirement to still have feedback meetings with their team. One effective tactic commonly used in these meetings is to view the scores at the next level up -- with the permission of the leader who owns that report -- and discuss where the larger-group results do and do not reflect the smaller-group experience.