Ubisoft employees issued a new statement stating that their demands are still not being met, following an open letter they wrote 200 days ago.
Numerous Ubisoft employees have gathered to form “The Better Ubisoft Group”. Since the company was accused of creating a toxic work environment, this group has been working to improve working conditions. Multiple employees have been accused of sexual harassment or assault.
Despite Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft’s CEO, pledging that he would do everything in his power, it didn’t stop him from doing so. [his]power to ensure that everyone… feels welcome, respected, safe”. The group states that it is still waiting for changes to occur. As such, A Better UbisoftA new update has been released by the company, which reads:
“A few days ago, Anika Grant [Ubisoft’s chief people officer]A video was created internally to present employees with the results this year’s global employee survey. This survey contained over 40 questions with space for comments.
Anika stated that transparency and accountability from management was a major concern in the survey. The video is eight minutes long and incredibly opaque. It consists of six points, three positive and three negatively. It was sent out via email on Friday, without the accompanying Mana or Arcade post employees expect. This makes it difficult not only to find but also makes it difficult for us to comment and share our concerns.
“With the exception for participation and engagement scores, the talking point were delivered without any numbers. Instead, employees were given vague statements such as ‘you told us …” or ‘we heard about you ….’. This leaves them no way to know if the statement that you have managers who can be approachable and supportive’ is true or false.
Anika shared this email on 14th December. She stated that 71% feel comfortable at work being who we are. It was not mentioned that many employees feel they must hide their true selves to avoid being judged or reprobated by managers or peers. The video tells us that many of the positive responses were above the Glint external benchmarks for general industrial industry. However, no context was provided for these benchmarks.
Anika concluded her presentation by saying that the ‘data analysis’ is still far from being complete. She stated that she plans to’really dig deep to understand feedback from minority or under-represented voices.
“However, the survey did not collect any global data beyond what was legally required. This includes binary gender and age data. While we are aware that there is work being done to prevent this from happening in the future, this should have been done years ago.
“We’re tired with explaining these seemingly obvious points repeatedly to a management staff who are either incompetent or don’t care to listen. We are passionate about our work so we push on. We care about the people and the games we play, and we want to fix this company.
“Our goal: A fairer, more successful Ubisoft.”
A Better Ubisoft reiterates the demands they made previously to improve their working conditions.
• Stop promoting, and moving known offenders from studio to studio, team to team with no repercussions. This cycle must stop.
• We want a collective seat at the table, to have a meaningful say in how Ubisoft as a company moves forward from here.
• Cross-industry collaboration, to agree to a set of ground rules and processes that all studios can use to handle these offences in the future.
• This collaboration must heavily involve employees in non-management positions and union representatives.
Sign the petition if you wish to show your support for A Better Ubisoft Here.