Uber CEO Travis Kalanick wants to take time away from the company to grieve his mother, who died last month in a tragic boating accident, and to work on himself. Uber is going through tough times after all the sexual harassment and discrimination case.
Uber hired lawyers to look into company practices after former Uber engineer Susan Fowler published a blog post detailing what she described as sexual harassment. After months of investigation into company’s culture and practices, former US Attorney General Eric Holder recommended a list of changes that are needed to be made in order to fix the company’s ethics and leadership troubles and to make Uber great again.
Before making any changes at Uber, Uber CEO took some time off to clear his head and to focus on building out a world-class leadership team. “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,” stated Travis in an email to employees.
“During this interim period, the leadership team, my directs, will be running the company. I will be available as needed for the most strategic decisions, but I will be empowering them to be bold and decisive in order to move the company forward swiftly,” he added. “It’s hard to put a timeline on this – it may be shorter or longer than we might expect.”
“For Uber 2.0 to succeed there is nothing more important than dedicating my time to building out the leadership team. 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.”
Here are some report’s recommendations:
- Some of the responsibilities that Mr. Kalanick has historically possessed should be shared or given outright to other members of senior management. The search for a COO (Chief Operating Officer) should address this concern to some extent
- Using performance review to hold leaders accountable with metrics tied to diversity, responsiveness to employee complaints, employee satisfaction, and compliance that impact management compensation
- Adding independent board seats, an independent board chairperson, an oversight committee, and an enhanced audit committee to oversee Kalanick and Uber management
- Requiring mandatory inclusive leadership training for Kalanick and other senior management
- Increasing Kalanick and management’s public support for the human resources team and its new values
Uber board of directors has voted to adopt all the recommendations and the same are being shared with employees and the public.
