Hidden away in eastern France, near the border of Switzerland and Italy, lies the city of Annecy. Perched on the northern shore of Lake Annecy, flowing canals run between centuries-old buildings in the city's center that seems ripped straight from the pages of a fairy tale. Come winter, the nearby mountains help turn Annecy into a winter-sports paradise. It's hard to imagine having a bad day in such a picturesque place, and if it was up to Elena Krugliakova, no one at Ubisoft Annecy would ever have a bad day.
Krugliakova has a unique job at Ubisoft Annecy. She's the studio's Chief Happiness Officer, a title that none of Ubisoft's more than 16,000 other employees share. The Saint Petersburg native got her start working at an external Ubisoft partner studio assisting on the development of Rainbow Six Siege before she joined the team in Annecy in 2018. Today, her role encompasses many responsibilities that include sending out internal communications, facilitating the needs of the development team, and conducting more traditional HR duties. As such an integral part of Ubisoft Annecy, Krugliakova is the focus of this entry of Empowering the Creators.
How did you become a Chief Happiness Officer?
Elena Krugliakova: At first, the open position at the studio was under a different title. It was "workplace experience manager" or something like that. But, after having the interview and taking into account my background and my experience, HR proposed the new title. So it was what the studio needed, but it also fit because of what I brought to the role.
What does the title mean to you? Did the change in title alter your impression of what the role was?
EK: Yeah, I think it put an emphasis on what I should aim to deliver in my role, and what I should try to make people feel. I would say happiness at Ubisoft is trying to make an ambience and environment where people feel safe and comfortable making fun games. It unites three elements: the first is workplace environment. How comfortable is the studio? How welcoming is it, how pleasant is it to be inside? The second is the relationship between coworkers; how included people feel, how at ease they are with other people. The third element is how fun our games are. For me, happiness comes down to a synergy of all three of these elements.
How do you go about making the studio feel pleasant and welcoming? I've heard rumors of you passing out ice cream during a recent heat wave.
EK: Yes! [laughs] I try to do something nice like that two-to-three times per month. It gives people something to look forward to, and I like trying to surprise them. They're always guessing, "what's coming next month? What's happening next week?"
Once a week, I host what we call our "Blind Lunch," where 10 random people from the studio get together to have lunch and get to know each other. We have four floors to our studio and more than 260 people, so people don't always get to see and speak with each other. It's a good chance to help people get to know their coworkers a little better.
Once a month, we have a studio breakfast, where everyone in the studio comes to the cafeteria and we all have breakfast together. I try to change the theme up every time, so one month it was an American-themed breakfast with bacon, eggs, pancakes, and maple syrup. One month we had crepes, another was fresh baguettes with cheese and jam. People always wonder what's coming next, so I think a lot of people look forward to it.
It seems like a lot of these are activities are food-related.
EK: Well, we also go on ski trips together as well! We always try to make people feel good as a team. Team spirit is important for us, and we want to build a culture of sharing – sharing well-being, sharing experience, sharing happiness together. But yes, I think we focus a lot on food as well because we're in France [laughs].
Happiness and team spirit aren't things that are easily quantifiable. How do you know that the things you are doing are working?
EK: Well, first, after every event we hold, we conduct a survey to ask people: What was good? What was bad? What could we improve? That gives us an idea of what we can change for the next time. Not everything we do is around food; we make a lot of effort to improve environmentally. We're installing a new system for recycling. We're trying to be more eco-friendly, trying to be greener. We hold regular roundtables to ask people what they think we can do to make the studio better in that regard. It's about having an open dialogue. I try to be as approachable as possible. I have two desks; in the morning I sit at reception, and then I sit on the 4th floor during the day, so people can always come up to me with whatever they want, good or bad.
We also do our best to work with philanthropic organizations. Right now, we're working with an organization for the new school year. We're encouraging our employees to give something as a present to children starting school this year, so we can present it all to the community as a gift from Ubisoft. This past spring we had what we call, "Duo Day." We hosted nine people with disabilities in the studio. They shadowed our devs to learn more about working in game development, and to learn what we do and how we do it. For most of them, it was their first experience working in an environment like this, and we actually ended up hiring one of the visitors to work with us full-time.
Annecy is a beautiful, charming city. How does the culture of Annecy impact the studio culture?
EK: I think Annecy as a city is very relaxing, and it makes the work/life balance easier to manage and maintain. We have a lake for the summer, and mountains for the winter. Annecy is very small; we don't have a lot of traffic, pretty much everyone rides their bike to work, and it doesn't take more than 10 minutes to go from any point in the city to work. It makes mornings easier and weekends longer.
I was living in Saint Petersburg before, a city of 7 million people. It took me an hour and a half every morning to get to work, and an hour and half to get home. I went from spending three hours sitting in traffic every day to a 10-minute bike ride, so I really like the change.
Do you think healthy work/life balance is specific to Annecy, or a part of Ubisoft's culture?
EK: I think it's all of Ubisoft. I think one of the core values here is to keep people healthy and creative. We still have overtime, for sure, but we make sure to limit it. For me, it's really an indication of the value of work/life balance.
Ubisoft Annecy has about 260 people. What are the benefits of working at a medium-sized studio like that?
EK: I think we still get to have the personal connection with everyone. For example, until about six months ago, our studio manager, Rebecka [Coutaz] still knew everyone by their first name. Everyone is valuable, everyone is a person you know. We're not separated into groups, like "those are the level designers, those are the programmers." Everyone is together here. I know who has food allergies, who speaks three languages, who came from the US. I think it's more interesting to approach people more personally, which we are still able to do.
As someone who has so much impact on office culture, how do you help promote a welcoming, accepting, and inclusive work environment?
EK: I think it's interesting to highlight these topics in terms of diversity. We host diversity panels once a year and allow people to discuss whatever they like, so that we can start a dialogue around it whether it's diversity in terms of culture, gender, race, or anything else. We're always looking for ways to bring more women into the industry. We're a part of the Ubisoft Gaming School, which teaches kids and younger prospective game developers the tools they need to enter the industry. It's important for women to understand that games and game development are also for them.
We have about 18 different cultures represented here, so we try to be really accepting of them all. We're one of the first studios in France to make sure all our communications are done in French and English. We just want to make the transition as easy as possible for everyone.
What qualities do you think are important to have as a Chief Happiness Officer?
EK: Being positive, even if something terrible happens or there's an argument. I am a facilitator and problem solver. I need to always be positive, open, communicative, and tolerant. We have lots of cultures here and I might not immediately understand our differences, but I need to be able to listen to really understand someone who has had a different experience from me.
