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The accusation is not only against the managers but mainly against their HR department. The CHRO is now being asked to investigate their own department? Doesn'

The accusation is not only against the managers but mainly against their HR department. The CHRO is now being asked to investigate their own department? Doesn't seem very effective.

linkregister 10y ago
Agreed. I think an external consulting company should be hired to do the investigation, both for efficacy and for optics.
dankohn1 10y ago
According to the article, the CHRO is newly appointed. Presumably, all of Fowler's email complaints should still be on file (and if they're not, the company is potentially guilty of spoliation [0]). If they're not, I hope Fowler kept a copy. Let's also see if Uber starts reporting the percentage of women, as other top tech companies do. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoliation_of_evidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoliation_of_evidence
- partycoder 10y ago
  I think she achieved her objective which is shedding light on the internal problems at Uber. While many people do that via Glassdoor or similar websites, she opted for doing it in a non-anonymous way, which means that Uber may retaliate legally if they can, or that future employers might try to avoid someone who is perceived as being "problematic", to name some few scenarios. Now, HR departments operate in borderline illegal ways. Many contract clauses are non-enforceable, but they all insist in doing it anyways. If you feel collectively pissed off, get all the women employees to unionize and start a collective bargain for better terms of employment and even go on strike.
hamburglar 10y ago
I really hope they're able to corroborate some of the claims about how HR responded, because there was a whole list of responses that make it clear that at least one person in HR is a liability to the company: * waving away sexual harassment because the offender is a "high performer" * repeatedly lying about the same person committing their "first offense" * telling the reporter that retaliation should be expected and there's nothing HR can do about it * implying the reporter must be the problem because the common element in all of her complaints is her * telling the reporter that it's unprofessional to report these problems via email and to keep records of them These are all responses of an HR department that is going out of their way to not hear complaints, and any company of Uber's size should be very, very concerned about this attitude coming back to bite them in the ass. If these responses all came from one HR contact, that person should be out on their ass ASAP. If they came from various people, then HR management is completely fucked.
- halbritt 10y ago
  Fundamentally, the job of HR is to shield the company from liability and in this case, they failed miserably.
pbiggar 10y ago
Maybe, but given the allegations and how quickly it has gotten traction, I would expect them to act and make pretty large changes. Here's what I think they'll need to do: - fire the entire chain of command to the HR person that she spoke to, probably the HR person too. - institute a deep policy around fixing the performance review issue, the transfer issue, and the harassment issue. - firing whoever they find who has engaged in any of those issues, which is probably at least 20 mid-level managers and some of their bosses who knew about it but didnt fix it - put a huge amount of work into hiring more women and retaining more women, including broad policy and culture changes. That is, if @travisk means what he says. If not, they'll fire 3 scapegoats and declare the problem solved.
- alexandercrohde 10y ago
  I think the problem is, and all the comments here seem to pretty much infer this, is that if the institution is corrupt, then the process of it cleansing itself will also be corrupt (Who's the scapegoat?). It seems very rare to me that once a corporation loses its ambition for a greater calling and sinks into "let's play business" that it should ever recover.

The accusation is not only against the managers but mainly against their HR department. The CHRO is now being asked to investigate their own department? Doesn't seem very effective.

linkregister 10y ago

Agreed. I think an external consulting company should be hired to do the investigation, both for efficacy and for optics.

dankohn1 10y ago

According to the article, the CHRO is newly appointed. Presumably, all of Fowler's email complaints should still be on file (and if they're not, the company is potentially guilty of spoliation [0]). If they're not, I hope Fowler kept a copy. Let's also see if Uber starts reporting the percentage of women, as other top tech companies do. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoliation_of_evidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoliation_of_evidence

partycoder 10y ago
I think she achieved her objective which is shedding light on the internal problems at Uber. While many people do that via Glassdoor or similar websites, she opted for doing it in a non-anonymous way, which means that Uber may retaliate legally if they can, or that future employers might try to avoid someone who is perceived as being "problematic", to name some few scenarios. Now, HR departments operate in borderline illegal ways. Many contract clauses are non-enforceable, but they all insist in doing it anyways. If you feel collectively pissed off, get all the women employees to unionize and start a collective bargain for better terms of employment and even go on strike.

hamburglar 10y ago

I really hope they're able to corroborate some of the claims about how HR responded, because there was a whole list of responses that make it clear that at least one person in HR is a liability to the company: * waving away sexual harassment because the offender is a "high performer" * repeatedly lying about the same person committing their "first offense" * telling the reporter that retaliation should be expected and there's nothing HR can do about it * implying the reporter must be the problem because the common element in all of her complaints is her * telling the reporter that it's unprofessional to report these problems via email and to keep records of them These are all responses of an HR department that is going out of their way to not hear complaints, and any company of Uber's size should be very, very concerned about this attitude coming back to bite them in the ass. If these responses all came from one HR contact, that person should be out on their ass ASAP. If they came from various people, then HR management is completely fucked.

halbritt 10y ago
Fundamentally, the job of HR is to shield the company from liability and in this case, they failed miserably.

pbiggar 10y ago

Maybe, but given the allegations and how quickly it has gotten traction, I would expect them to act and make pretty large changes. Here's what I think they'll need to do: - fire the entire chain of command to the HR person that she spoke to, probably the HR person too. - institute a deep policy around fixing the performance review issue, the transfer issue, and the harassment issue. - firing whoever they find who has engaged in any of those issues, which is probably at least 20 mid-level managers and some of their bosses who knew about it but didnt fix it - put a huge amount of work into hiring more women and retaining more women, including broad policy and culture changes. That is, if @travisk means what he says. If not, they'll fire 3 scapegoats and declare the problem solved.

alexandercrohde 10y ago
I think the problem is, and all the comments here seem to pretty much infer this, is that if the institution is corrupt, then the process of it cleansing itself will also be corrupt (Who's the scapegoat?). It seems very rare to me that once a corporation loses its ambition for a greater calling and sinks into "let's play business" that it should ever recover.