Leaked Microsoft polls show employees feel much worse about culture and leadership than at the beginning of the year

• Microsoft workers feel worse about workplace culture and leader effectiveness, internal polls show.
• The company measures sentiment with “Daily Signals” polls, and some results show falling morale.
• Tensions have been high amid layoffs and paused pay raises. Angry workers recently roasted the CEO.

Internal polls viewed by Insider show that Microsoft employees are significantly less satisfied with the company’s workplace culture and the effectiveness of leaders than they were at the start of the year.

Daily Signals polls are used by the company to gauge employee sentiment. Since January, Insider has viewed screenshots of graphs of daily responses to each question. In response to a comment request, Microsoft provided monthly averages.

The percentage of employees who said they are “seeing evidence of a positive change in Microsoft’s workplace culture” fell to 40% on a monthly basis in July, from 62% in January.

A poll asking whether employees had “confidence in the overall effectiveness of my organization’s leaders” dropped to 59% in July from 75% in January.

In July, 76% of employees believed Microsoft had a growth mindset, which means they have “a strong desire to learn, persist in the face of setbacks, and value failure as essential to learning” compared to 84% in January.

Fewer than half of employees said they would stay at Microsoft if offered a comparable position with comparable pay and benefits at another company, which corresponds to previous results for this question seen by Insider last month. In July, 48% of those polled said they planned to stay at Microsoft, down from 68% in January.

Microsoft’s morale appears to be deteriorating as a result of layoffs and the company’s recent decision to halt raises this year and reduce its budget for bonuses and stock awards.

“Here, employees take pay cuts as our company and leadership make record profits,” one employee responded to Nadella. “It’s not right, there’s no other way to look at it.”