Uber vows to change from the top
‘Cult of the individual’ is on its way out
Amid a swirl of scandals, three senior women executives at Uber held a call on Tuesday about the beleaguered company’s plans to improve a workplace seen as hostile and sexist, its search for a No. 2 to help its reflexively combative CEO Travis Kalanick, and ways it will treat its drivers better.
“Put simply, change starts at the top,” said Arianna Huffington, an Uber board member. “That’s why Travis accepted responsibility from the first all-hands (meeting), and apologized for leading the company to that point.”
“That point” for the world’s most valuable startup includes a bombshell blog post by a former engineer alleging sexual harassment; revelations about a secret program to foil law enforcement investigations; a video of Kalanick browbeating an Uber driver; a lawsuit alleging that Uber stole trade secrets from Google’s self-driving car spinoff; and an exodus of highprofile executives, most recently Jeff Jones, who quit as president on Sunday, saying Uber’s aggressive culture was inconsistent with his values.
Kalanick had already promised to seek “leadership help” and announced a search for a chief operating officer. “Whatever Uber’s challenges, the best of the best are coming to the table, excited about the company’s potential,” Huffington said.
Kalanick skipped the call because he was too busy interviewing potential candidates for the new position of chief operating officer, according to Huffington, who bristled at questions about whether Uber stage-managed an allfemale panel.
“It’s not like we got them
from central casting,” she said, noting that the positions held by her fellow call participants “should be taken as a really good sign of how women are valued at Uber.” Huffington was joined by Rachel Holt, head of U.S. and Canada operations; Liane Hornsey, chief human resources operator; general counsel Salle Yoo (who did not speak); and Rachel Whetstone, head of communications.
Huffington bristled even more about the top query from reporters, one repeated several times: Would the board ever ask Kalanick to step down?
“The board has confidence in Travis and we are proceeding ahead with the search” for a chief operating officer, she said, later adding, “I know it’s a sexy question, but really it’s the same answer. It’s not been addressed, it hasn’t come up, and we don’t expect it to come up.”
Hornsey and Huffington both defended Kalanick as someone who is learning from his mistakes. “I’ve only been here 11 weeks, but almost week by week, I see him changing,” Hornsey said. The events of recent weeks “are absolutely something that would cause an individual to change.”
Despite a #DeleteUber protest campaign that started in January, Uber’s growth continues to accelerate, Holt said. “Last week, riders in the U.S. took more trips with Uber than ever before,” she said. In fact, U.S. growth was “faster in the first 10 weeks of 2017 than in the first 10 weeks of 2016.”
Holt outlined a series of changes in how Uber will treat its drivers — and later said that many of them came from Jones, “a very big advocate for focusing on drivers and addressing their pain points.”
Uber knows it needs “to bring more humanity to the way we interact with drivers,” she said, acknowledging that “relationships with many drivers are frayed.”
Changes include improved training for support agents, more inperson support centers, streamlined earnings statements, and giving drivers a say in fare adjustments.
Uber will balance driver history against passenger complaints. “Someone with three rider complaints but just 100 trips under their belt will be treated very differently than a driver who has received three complaints but completed 10,000 trips,” Holt said.
And it will use technology to verify some rider complaints before suspending drivers.
Uber also needs to undergo more soulsearching and focus on team-building, Hornsey said. “Uber is disruptive — and disruption demands the confidence to be bold,” she said. “What I have seen, though, is that this has translated internally to what I would call a cult of the individual.”
Uber will release its first report on workplace diversity by the end of this month, Hornsey said. It’s one of the few major Silicon Valley companies that has not yet disclosed data about hiring minorities and women. Hornsey noted that the number of Uber employees doubled last year.
In February, Uber hired former Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the charges of sexism and hostile workplace, both through interviews with employees and an anonymous tip line. That report is expected to be concluded last next month, and will be publicly released, Huffington said.
“There can be no room at Uber for brilliant jerks and zero tolerance for anything but totally respectable behavior in an equitable workplace environment,” Huffington said.