The days of "EA Spouse" (later revealed to be Erin Hoffman) are now just a distant memory for the leading publisher. EA has shared exclusively with GameDaily BIZ the results of its latest global workforce survey (called the Talk Back Survey) – taken in December 2007 – which it feels is proof positive that the company has been making strides and that the vast majority of its worldwide employees are confident in EA and happy to work there.

A total of 77 percent of EA's global workforce completed the survey, which EA said is a "great response" that allows the company to obtain "a good reflection of employee perspective." Three core areas were examined: 1) Alignment – "Do you feel aligned with the business strategy and goals in your area, and do you know how you fit into those plans?" 2) Capabilities – "Do you have the knowledge and skills to do your job, and do we collectively have the resources/skills to achieve our goals?" 3) Engagement – "Do you feel motivated and excited about your job, and are you committed to making EA better?"

EA found that since the last time they conducted this kind of employee survey (back in fiscal year 2005 – around October 2004), the results in these three core areas all saw "significant improvement." Alignment came in at 73 percent favorable, Capabilities at 72 percent favorable and Engagement 63 percent favorable.

Furthermore, EA said that the results yielded three trends that were particularly important:

The Label/division structure is working - Employees understand the direction of the company and the direction of their Label/Division, and they understand how their team's objectives support their Label or Division's goals (82 percent favorable).

Team commitment - There are high levels of integrity and commitment within teams. Employees know that people do what they say they will do (80 percent favorable).

Knowledge sharing and respect - Within teams there is openness and respect. The attributes of sharing knowledge and information (87 percent favorable), and open communication and respect (86 percent favorable) were a very positive reflection on the ability to effectively work together, especially within teams.

Speaking in a phone interview, Gabrielle Toledano, Executive Vice President of Human Resources, told us, "Looking back three years, this is huge for us. Overall employee satisfaction and employee morale [were affected] three years ago because a lot of crazy stuff was going on... it was right around the time of the EA Spouse situation. People were feeling really burnt out, but what we got out of this survey loud and clear was huge, huge improvement on overall satisfaction levels, overall morale and the alignment in particular with the new work structure and the new business strategy."

This new work structure, of course, is the reorganization of EA into four labels and the city-state approach towards development that CEO John Riccitiello emphasized in his recent speech at the D.I.C.E. Summit.

Toledano said that this has really resonated with EA employees, but she also confessed that she was worried about conducting such an important survey so soon after a big restructuring. "We expected potentially some turmoil to show up in the survey... and we were surprised quite frankly to see the level of understanding. But we had hoped for that because we've been communicating [the plan to employees]. It's sort of like 'How do you do a reorg like that?' We've done it pretty carefully and we've been communicating throughout and we've had change management and HR consultants working with everybody," she said.

She continued, "As an executive team we've actually taken another look at our company values and we've reincorporated innovation and accountability and taking more risk, so there are a lot of things that we've been doing to implement change at EA... organizational change, leadership change, relooking at our values, and we're relooking at how we pay employees to really tie rewards and recognition to results."

What's encouraging about Riccitiello's city-state model is that allows for more creative freedom at EA's various studios, and that ultimately leads to happier employees. "The people that are closest to the projects are now more in power than they were before, which is why when you give people that kind of freedom and power they are generally much happier in their work environment," Toledano explained.

Obviously one of the big issues with EA Spouse dealt with quality of life for EA employees. While the survey did not focus specifically on quality of life, it did offer some insight into changes at the company, and EA feels that it's definitely improved. "The work experience isn't negative right now; it's positive. When we dived into what we can do better, every survey popped up with, 'I want to be paid more.' ... But in terms of work/life balance, we didn't have a huge negative there, but it wasn't in the high 90s either. It's hugely better than it was three years ago. But as people we're always struggling to make sure to have a balance, and a lot of that is an individual decision. So as much as a manager at a company might say to people who make games 'Go home,' sometimes they just don't," Toledano said.

"So we are definitely a company right now that says, 'We are not going to require people to come in and work beyond hours that they should be giving.' So we're doing better in that area. ... For example, one of the questions was, 'My work schedule allows sufficient flexibility to meet personal needs' and that was 80 percent favorable. We're not in a bad place on this survey. We were in a bad place three to four years ago. There's simply no tolerance at EA today for what was going on during EA Spouse."

As further proof that EA's city-state model is working and is yielding more confident employees, Toledano also pointed to newly integrated EA studio, Pandemic. We talked to Pandemic President Josh Resnick back at the D.I.C.E. Summit, and he is clearly a believer in EA's vision.

"...we're absolutely part of a greater family now within EA and I definitely get it now, thinking about the other studios within EA and helping them and taking advantage of the synergies in terms of what they're doing and what we're working on, just like what I was doing with BioWare before," Resnick commented. "But now I just have this wonderful luxury of focus. Not a lot of companies get that luxury just to focus on making great games. So that's what I love about this new partnership with EA; I get to be Pandemic, I'm totally independent, I have full creative control over the products we work on and what we're doing and when we release them, all of that kind of stuff. The vision is still ours; we own that. But now we have the support of an amazing company like EA and I get involved into these wonderful things that EA has to offer."

----------------------------------

Guess they are not holed up in an office working 100 hours a week anymore.  Hopefully this will lead to better games.