Uber Culture and Environment
Discuss about the Competitive Culture of Uber Technologies Inc.
Uber has an aggressive and competitive culture that creates an environment for only the strong people to survive (uber.com 2018). A critical need for competitive environment which is technology driven as Uber lies in attracting the talented female employees. The primary problem of the company lies in its broken system and ill informed staffs from the very beginning. The biggest problem faced by the company revolved around the role of human resource conceived by the present commanding and brash leader, Travis Kalanick. According to him, the primary functions of HR should be recruiting talents and effectively let going of the staff when necessary. The first official HR head, Renee Atwood, also did not communicate problems. There have been instances when at executive held weekly she sat quietly without sharing any sensitive information that could put Uber at risk. When one of the employees named Fowler reported a sexual harassment case to the upper management and HR, so step taken other than a warning since, as he was a first timer in performing the crime (Cramer and Krueger 2016). Moreover, she also received a threat regarding termination due to her complains to the manager. As per the employment laws this kind of threat seems illegal.
The HR representatives that worked with the staffs did not receive managerial coaching and hence they did not have the idea of dealing with the workplace or performance related issues (Cusumano 2015). This is because; the present leader of Uber did not want to spend resources on training the executives. It never clicked him that employee training is as important as robust recruitment process. Moreover, the decision to terminate employees was quick without any further investigation. The employee review process undertaken was also defaulted. The employee who initially received higher performance review might face a significantly lower one its subsequent phase. There was hardly any aid provided by the HR in understanding and mitigating the situation. There were also instances when suddenly a staff declared inappropriate and dealt in swiftly (Christensen, Raynor and McDonald 2015). Hence, there existed lesser-concerted efforts for covering up the workplace issues that attributed to the inadequacies and problems of the department. Further, the company had only fewer only fewer HR representatives for training managers and dealing the sexual harassment cases of close to 6000 employees.
An ideal situation of human resource management in a company is explained with the help of the Harvard Model. The model put forward by Beer et al (2015) stresses on line managers role who is supposed to take greater responsibility for ensuring alignment of the competitive strategy with the employee policies. In addition, they also set policies governing the activities of the personnel and their development and enforcement mutually enforcing manner. In the year 2003, Armstrong further put forward that the framework of the model depended on the belief that problems related to the management of staff is only solved when the general managers develops viewpoint regarding employee involvement and their development by the enterprise along with the practices and policies in the development of the goals. The six critical components of the model include (Marchington 2015):
- Recognition of the interest of a range of stakeholders
- Recognition of the trade off either implicitly or explicitly between owners and employee interest and between different interest groups
- Widens HRM context for including ‘employee influence’, the work organization and the question related to supervisory style
- It acknowledges broader range of contextual influences on the choice of management strategy that put forward meshing of socio-cultural logics and product-market
- Model not driven by the environmental and situational determinism
Primary Problems of Uber
However, the presence of ethical, social and sustainability issues in Uber led to its inefficiency in implementing Harvard HRM Model.
The ethical issues faced by Uber include (Weinstein 2014):
- Presence of Multitasking Drivers: The primary selling point of Uber lies in the immediate notification to the nearby drivers. This also acts as one of its drawback from the perspective of safety.
- Safety of the Passengers: The background checks of the Uber drivers do not represent open record and in spite of repeated questioning accountability factor of the drivers remained unknown. This has led to a threat to the safety of the passenger who face sexual assault
- Privacy Factor: The tracking device of Uber is a means of advancing business interest. Uber does not take prior permission from the customers before monitoring their whereabouts. This is putting the privacy factors of the customers in question.
- Act of Leadership: The leadership followed by the CEO, Travis Kalanick not only brash but also commanding and more focused on the people’s recruitment than any other aspect of the company.
The social issues faced by Uber include:
Issues of Employment: The Company tries to create new opportunities for employment by hiring new people (Dorney 2017). In the process, they do not even do a proper background check that increasingly leads to sexual molestation cases. Moreover, employees within the company also face termination without any prior notice.
Institutional Misogyny and Sexual Harassment: Uber has systemic problem of sexism that became more evident from the message of former software engineer who publicly claimed charges of sexual harassment against her boss to which she was told that the person could not be disciplined, as he was valuable for the company (Griffith, Esch and Trittenbach 2018). He did not lose his job since it was his first time offence and he was a good performer. Later on she went on to discover that other women faced similar issues from the manager and was reverted in a similar manner by the HR department.
The Sustainability Issues faced by Uber include:
Uber is referred as latest disruptor of business in the latest disruptor of business in the new economy (Akhter 2017). The company boasts of creating close to 160, 000 workers responsible for driving the company. The underlining question lies in the quality of the job and the impact it has on the existing jobs. According to the reports put forward by the Wall Street Journal, close to 62 percent of the Uber drivers have additional income source. Although the hourly wages of an Uber driver is high in comparison to the traditional chauffeur or taxi drivers but the company does hold responsibility for gas, insurance and maintenance. The Uber drivers from their own pockets provide these expenses.
Sustainability issues take place when the employee gets the same benefits as they used to get in their previous jobs (Seele 2016). Besides the aspect of the wages, the Uber employees do not similar workplace and employment protections similar to taxi or professional drivers. Another aspect that raises sustainability issues includes the fact that the company shortchanges their drivers by slashing fares and enticing newer customers. This is very unlike traditional taxi fares managed tightly.
The direct implication of the external factors related to the work culture and the claims of sexual harassment has been the firing of close to twenty employees by the human resource department (Meijer and Kapoor 2014). The terminations were due to the investigations on a case related to sexual harassment. Uber also led to the creation of an anonymous hotline for the staffs for dealing with incidents related to discrimination, bullying, unprofessional behavior and sexual harassment. Thus, the company took necessary steps in changing its culture following a series of scandals that not only demonstrated a toxic work environment but also aggressive business practices. In the wake of managing its people, the company hired a former attorney general of US for carrying out separate set of investigations into the broader culture of the company, its corporate governance and values (Siebert and Martin 2016).
HRM Activity:
HR followed a transactional approach by concentrating only on recruitment.
Action:
Instead, the HR should have followed a multi directional approach
HRM Activity:
On joining Uber, HRM asks the new employees made to subscribe to the core values of the company that included bold bets of being customer obsessed (Dorney 2017). The HR managers also did not publish any diversity report.
Action:
The HRM should first ask the employees to focus on diversity, respects and believe in the aspect of inclusion. This would have encouraged the employees to better bond with the clients.
The recommendations include:
- Building an Inclusive Culture: It is necessary for working tirelessly for educating the workforce on how to overcome bias. Inclusion and celebration of diversity should take place in a in a manner authentic to the company.
- Providing Training to all Managers: There is also the need for training new managers so that they are able to understand the exact needs of the organization.
- Listening and then Responding: Employees should candidly speak about the issues and gather more confidence that conflicts would be resolved fairly. Documented processes and policies should circulate for everyone to see and apply. In addition, the top management should prioritize transparency along with facilities for open dialogue.
- Showing Zero Tolerance for Unethical Behavior: This helps in enhancing employee engagement and prevents the company from making negative headlines.
References:
Akhter, F., 2017. Unlocking digital entrepreneurship through technical business process. Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues, 5(1), pp.36-42.
Beer, M., Boselie, P. and Brewster, C., 2015. Back to the future: Implications for the field of HRM of the multistakeholder perspective proposed 30 years ago. Human Resource Management, 54(3), pp.427-438.
Christensen, C.M., Raynor, M.E. and McDonald, R., 2015. What is disruptive innovation. Harvard Business Review, 93(12), pp.44-53.
Cramer, J. and Krueger, A.B., 2016. Disruptive change in the taxi business: The case of Uber. American Economic Review, 106(5), pp.177-82
Cusumano, M.A., 2015. How traditional firms must compete in the sharing economy. Communications of the ACM, 58(1), pp.32-34.
Dorney, G. 2017. Uber’s evolving problems and why good HR is so important. [online] Available at: https://www.hrmonline.com.au/section/featured/uber-evolving-problems-hr/ [Accessed 27 Apr. 2018].
Griffith, D.A., van Esch, P. and Trittenbach, M., 2018. Investigating the mediating effect of Uber’s sexual harassment case on its brand: Does it matter?. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 43, pp.111-118.
Marchington, M., 2015. Human resource management (HRM): Too busy looking up to see where it is going longer term?. Human Resource Management Review, 25(2), pp.176-187.
Meijer, E. and Kapoor, V., 2014. The responsive enterprise: embracing the hacker way. Queue, 12(10), p.10.
Seele, P., 2016. Envisioning the digital sustainability panopticon: a thought experiment of how big data may help advancing sustainability in the digital age. Sustainability Science, 11(5), pp.845-854.
Siebert, S. and Martin, G., 2016. Managing people and organizations in changing contexts. Routledge.
uber.com 2018. [online] Available at: https://www.uber.com/en-AU/drive/requirements/ [Accessed 27 Apr. 2018].
Weinstein, B. 2014. Opinion: Four other ways Uber is ethically challenged. [online] Available at: https://money.cnn.com/2014/11/21/technology/uber-ethics-oped/index.html [Accessed 27 Apr. 2018].
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