14 June, 2017
Also on Tuesday, Uber founder and CEO Travis Kalanick accepted responsibility for the company's state and told employees that he'd be taking an indefinite leave of absence.
"Recent events have brought home for me that people are more important than work, and that I need to take some time off of the day-to-day to grieve my mother, whom I buried on Friday, to reflect, to work on myself, and to focus on building out a world-class leadership team", Mr Kalanick said in the memo.
"But if we are going to work on Uber 2.0, I also need to work on Travis 2.0 to become the leader that this company needs and that you deserve", he added. Kalanick's decision to step aside comes after an internal investigation conducted by a former US Attorney General, Eric Holder, a probe the company launched due to allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination.
Holder recommended that Kalanick be relieved of some leadership responsibilities, shifting them to a chief operating officer and other senior managers. The ride-hailing app, which has roughly 12,000 employees, hired the services of Holder to look into the company's work culture and contracted law firm Perkins Coie to review the specific harassment allegations. Those moves came last week, after an outside firm was hired to investigate more than 200 misconduct claims against the company, as NPR's Yuki Noguchi reported.
Liane Hornsey, Uber's chief human resources officer who started in January, said implementing the recommendations "will improve our culture, promote fairness and accountability, and establish processes and systems to ensure the mistakes of the past will not be repeated".
The CEO also copped criticism in 2014 when he told GQ that he referred to Uber as "Boob-er" because it helped him attract women.
Specifically, the recommendations call for adding independent members to the board of directors, including an independent chair. The board now has eight voting members, three from within the company.
Coleman should also communicate regularly with employees and address diversity and inclusion, Holder recommended.
In addition, the report says that diversity and inclusiveness should be a key value for Uber that's included in management training.The word diversity appears 42 times in the 13-page recommendations document.
The company has also been reported to have been caught up in cases of intellectual property theft concerning their self driving auto service which has already resulted in the termination of Anthony Levandowski, the head of Uber's self driving service and faces a federal investigation for using a program called Greyball, which allowed Uber to evade law enforcement in areas where it is illegal.
After Fowler posted her essay, Uber Technologies Inc. made changes in human resources and opened a 24-hour hotline for employees. That investigation, which was separate from Holder's, checked into 215 complaints; 57 are still under investigation.
It also marks a pivotal moment for the world's most valuable venture-backed private company, which has been largely defined by Kalanick's brash approach. Uber's valuation has climbed to almost $70 billion. According to the latest email sent by Kalanick, it's high time for him to revisit company's strategy and management, besides reinventing himself to guarantee the success of Uber 2.0.
In response to that and similar accusations, Uber fired 20 employees, including senior executives, and reprimanded 40 more employees.
Kalanick lost his temper earlier this year in an argument with an Uber driver who was complaining about pay, and Kalanick's profanity-laced comments were caught in video that went viral.
April 2017: Continuing with the spate of resignations, Rachel Whetstone, Uber's PR head quit the company, confirming numerous allegations leveled against the male executives as well as the top level management.
"For the last eight years my life has always been about Uber", Kalanick wrote.
Kalanick said Tuesday that his leadership team would be running the company in his absence.
