Ubisoft’s chief people officer reports that employee surveys show the Assassin’s Creed publisher is “on the right path” to recover from the wave of abuse and harassment allegations it faced in 2020.

Speaking at the inaugural GamesIndustry.biz HR Summit on September 27, 2023, Anika Grant reflected on the changes that have been made since she joined in the wake of those allegations, when Ubisoft was “navigating a misconduct crisis.”

“HR was considered to be part of the problem,” she acknowledged during her keynote entitled ‘The building blocks of change.’ “As a result, we had lost the confidence of our teams. Confidence in us as a function, confidence in us as individuals and as a profession. So my first priority was to figure out how we could win back that trust.

“Listening is a core ingredient of trust and respect. To feel respected, people need to feel heard.”

Grant said the publisher’s HR team set itself a three-point mantra going forwards, centred around listening, transparency and accountability. Meanwhile, she spent her initial months learning more about the situation Ubisoft was in, such as speaking to as many staff as possible – including those involved in the investigations.

“My main takeaway was that this was not just about improving the outcomes, but also improving people’s experience of working at Ubisoft,” she said.

Grant added that tackling this challenge was a “huge amount of work” and listed some of the initiatives Ubisoft implemented to address this.

The publisher set up an employee relations team, which included professionals from outside the company who had experience handling misconduct and reporting, as well as introducing new training programs, interventions and other preventative initiatives.

The internal reporting system is said to have been revamped to make it simpler and speed up the process of dealing with reports. Grant also said she spent a lot of time clarifying the tools and channels available to staff, some of which were through independent third parties.

A new code of conduct was implemented, making it clear what was and wasn’t acceptable at Ubisoft, and mandatory training in anti-discrimination, anti-harassment and so on, was introduced. Grant emphasised that this is not only for newcomers, but also needs to be refreshed once a year for established employees.

She also reported that the company holds global town hall meetings on a more regular basis, as well as “local listening sessions,” for which she visited over 30 studios in the space of nine months.

Crucially, Ubisoft brought in independent third party Glint to revamp its annual employee survey, as well as give the company access to external benchmarks from around 850 companies in other sectors and an analytics tool to gauge whether these new initiatives have been effective.

Grant reported that in the publisher’s 2022 employee survey, the phrase “I am treated with respect and dignity” was the second highest-scoring question at 85 point. This was also the score that increased the most over the previous year’s survey and was five points ahead of any external benchmark.

She claimed that all three questions related to respectful and safe workplaces showed improvement. Each of these were in the top five highest-scoring questions and saw the biggest increases on previous years.

Grant notes that targets on key indicators from the survey in the areas of engagement, diversity and inclusion, and respect are discussed every year with board of directors, and form part of the criteria that dictates compensation for CEO Yves Guillemot.

Later in the talk, she mentioned that gender diversity at Ubisoft has improved, going from 22% of employees being women in 2020 to 26% in 2023.

“The work that’s needed to foster a safe and caring workspace is something that never really ends, and something that we continue to focus on and be invested in,” she said. “But at least for now, we’ve heard directly from our teams that we’re on the right path and that progress has been made.”

A week after Grant’s keynote, it was reported that five former Ubisoft executives had been arrested following a year-long investigation into incidents of sexual assault and harassment within the company that occured prior to Grant joining.

Among those were former chief creative officer Serge Hascoët and ex-VP of editorial and creative services Tommy François – both of whom were named in the initial allegations and left Ubisoft in Summer 2020.

When asked about the arrests at the time, a spokesperson told GamesIndustry.biz: “Ubisoft has no knowledge of what has been shared and therefore can’t comment.”

We’ll have more from Grant’s keynote on the future of work, including the expected impact of Gen Z, in the coming weeks.