INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
As Uber tries to chart a new course, it still can&t manage to outrun news that paints its corporate culture in an ugly light.
AsThe Wall
Street Journal reports, Uber is being investigated by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for gender disparities pertaining
to hiring practices and pay
The EEOC probe began in August 2017 and the commission has been interviewing employees and collecting relevant documents since
The EEOC declined to provide details to TechCrunch due to &confidentiality provisions,& adding thatdetails of an EEOC investigation
&[become] public only when the EEOC files a lawsuit, which is typically a last resort.&
An Uber spokesperson told TechCrunch that the
company has &proactively made a lot of changes in the last 18 months.& Those changes include creating and enacting a new &salary and equity
structure,& reforming the way it conducts performance reviews to emphasize high-quality feedback, putting out diversity and inclusion
reports and involving more employees in diversity trainings.
Uber put out its first diversity and inclusion report in March 2017 and in
April of this year updated those numbers, which demonstrate some movement in the right direction, albeit at a glacial pace
In the latest report, the company noted it had increased the percentage of women in its workforce from 36.1 to 38 percent, which isn&t
exactly progress to write home about.
With new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber is hoping to rewrite its own story, but the company continues to
be embroiled in leadership turbulence, like last week departure of Chief People Officer Liane Hornsey after an internal investigation into
race-based discrimination and last month departure of Chief Brand OfficerBozoma Saint John.
It worth noting that Uber isn&t being singled
out by the EEOC, which has also launched recent investigations into age discrimination at Intel and gendered pay discrepancies at Google
Still, for Uber, no news would be good news — even just for a little while.
