And the next developer / publisher to struggle with employee problems: a survey revealed that around half of the workforce complains of bad treatment, including discrimination.
After Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard and a few others, Paradox is now crunching in the beams. A survey of employees by the Swedish trade unions SACO and Unionen produced terrifying results.
Accordingly, around half of the 133 employees who took part in the survey complained about bad treatment, including bullying / harassment and gender discrimination, especially among women. 69 percent of the female participants said that they were victims of such incidents. For the male workforce, it was 33 percent.
It was also complained that the perpetrators are apparently protected by the company and that there is a culture of silence at Paradox. The results of the survey have now been presented to the management and then to the workforce. A bad time for Paradox, as the CEO has just changed (not because of the incidents, as the company emphasizes and the unions also confirm).
Paradox has turned towards colleagues from Eurogamer meanwhile expressed and promised to take immediate measures to improve the situation. An external, neutral company should also be involved to evaluate everything:
“We are aware of a survey undertaken inside the company on this topic, and of the results, which are obviously not satisfactory. The management team wants to ensure this data is acted upon, but taking immediate, direct action is legally difficult thanks to the informal nature of the survey (and thanks to the results being shared just before we underwent this CEO change, which has been fairly busy for us). We are currently working to reconcile the informal survey with our own internal research, and are eager to take action. Paradox is now in the process of bringing in an external, neutral firm to conduct a thorough audit of our processes and a comprehensive employee survey. This will help us advance our efforts towards all of the subjects that we’ve worked to improve in recent years – harassment and abuse will be paramount among these, but we’ll also be examining subjects like unbiased hiring and compensation, ongoing bias awareness, inclusion, and more.”
