Internal poll: Morale declines at Facebook after year of scandals

Employee morale is reportedly declining at Facebook after a rough year for the company.

According to internal poll results conducted by the company and obtained by the Wall Street Journal, just over half of Facebook employees, 52 percent, say they are optimistic for the future of the company, down by 32 percent last year.

Only 53 percent of Facebook employees said that Facebook was making the world better, 19 percent lower than last year.

{mosads}The results come after a period of sustained difficulties for the company

Since late 2017, Facebook has endured revelations that its platform was manipulated by Russian trolls to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, been skewered by lawmakers and the public over the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, suffered a massive breach in which 30 million users data was compromised and been accused of being used by Myanmar’s military to spread propaganda in ethnic cleansing.

Amid this, the company’s stock price has plunged and nearly a dozen high-profile employees and executives have left, likely compounding negative sentiment at Facebook.

“It has been a difficult period, but every day we see people pulling together to learn the lessons of the past year and build a stronger company,” a Facebook spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal. “Everyone at Facebook has a stake in our future and we are heads down shipping great products and protecting the people who use them.”

Internal corporate polls are becoming increasingly common as companies try to figure out internal issues and head them off before they grow.

Overall favorability of Facebook is at 70 percent, down only three points from last year. The overall amount of time employees expect to stay at Facebook is down as well to 3.9 years, from 4.3 last year.