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Ubisoft has sent out an internal letter from CEO Yves Guillemot to its employees revealing the results of an internal survey investigating reports of a toxic workplace culture at the studio, as well as laying out what the company intends to do to combat the hostile environment.
The letter, which was passed along to Gamespot over the weekend, said that "nearly 14,000" employees responded to the anonymous, independent survey and found that "The survey showed that roughly 25% have experienced or witnessed some form of workplace misconduct in the past two years, and that 1 in 5 do not feel fully respected or safe in the work environment."
Equally damning was the survey's findings on how the harassment effected employees of different genders, finding that women experienced harassment more than 30% more commonly than men, with the perentage rising to 45% for non-binary respondants.
As a response to the audit, the company says it's putting into motion a four-point plan focusing on the key areas it feels it needs to improve upon. First up is to "Guarantee a working environment where everybody can feel safe" by implementing channels within the company for employees to report misconduct and escalate the reports safely and anonymously, as well as asking each Ubisoft site to set up first-level anti-sexism and anti-harrassment training that will be compulsary for all employees by the end of December.
The second point aims to "Putting diversity and inclusion at the heart of everything we do" which will involve the hiring of a new post of Head of Diversity and Inclusion as well as hiring more executives on their editorial teams. Another new position —the Chief People Officer—will be made to help with point three: "Refocus and strengthen our HR function" by reviewing the organisation and current hiring practices.
The final point "Make the managers of the group accountable and empower them" has Guillemot promising to "better support our managers so they become more examplary and become champions of these changes throughout our organisation" after noting that only 66% of those surveyed felt they had recieved the support they needed in the aftermath of reporting an incident.
The report comes in the wake of Guillemot apologising to Ubisoft fans for the multitude of incidents that had come to light in a video before the most recent Ubisoft Forward presentation last month that saw several high profile layoffs and an anonymous tool for staff to report incidents back in July.
