All you need to know about the Uber’s recent controversy over Sexual Harassment at work

Claiming to be one of the most successful and rewarding organizations to contain some of the best talents from all over the globe, has been in talks over a blog which was written by one of the former female employees about the sexual harassment she has to undergo during her tenure in the company

What was in the blog : Susan J Fowler is a former employee and she alleges one of her reporting Managers to have sexually harass her over a company chat. She reported the incidents with screenshots to the HR, CTO and all possible employees but the action was not taken. Apart from this she also pointed various occasions when women in particular were ignored. Major allegations were

• On my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over company chat. He was in an open relationship, he said, and his girlfriend was having an easy time finding new partners but he wasn’t. He was trying to stay out of trouble at work, he said, but he couldn’t help getting in trouble, because he was looking for women to have sex with.”
• “It was clear that [my new manager] was trying to get me to have sex with him, and it was so clearly out of line that I immediately took screenshots of these chat messages and reported him to HR.”
• “Upper management told me that [that manager] ‘was a high performer’ (i.e. had stellar performance reviews from his superiors) and they wouldn’t feel comfortable punishing him for what was probably just an innocent mistake on his part.”
• Based on alleged discussions with other women in the company “it became obvious that both HR and management had been lying about this being ‘his first offense,’ and it certainly wasn’t his last.”
• After allegedly promising to buy leather jackets for the whole team, a member of management allegedly said “that no leather jackets were being ordered for the women because there were not enough women in the organization to justify placing an order.”
• A director “said that because there were so many men in the org, they had gotten a significant discount on the men’s jackets but not on the women’s jackets, and it wouldn’t be equal or fair, he argued, to give the women leather jackets that cost a little more than the men’s jackets.”
• “(My manager) told me I was on very thin ice for reporting his manager to HR. California is an at-will employment state, he said, which means we can fire you if you ever do this again. I told him that was illegal, and he replied that he had been a manager for a long time, he knew what was illegal, and threatening to fire me for reporting things to HR was not illegal.”
• “I reported his threat immediately after the meeting to both HR and to the CTO: they both admitted that this was illegal, but none of them did anything.”

You can read the full blog Here.

What happened thereafter ?

Once the blog picked up some of the current employees in Uber also published individual blogs which further propelled the issue to come public. While this was happening, the management (the CEO Travis Kalanick) ordered an instant investigation in this concern. As reported in CNBC Travis Kalanick “I have just read Susan Fowler’s blog. What she describes is abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in. It’s the first time this has come to my attention so I have instructed Liane Horsey our new Chief Human Resources Officer to conduct an urgent investigation into these allegations.

Arianna Huffington who is Co Founder of the Huffington Post and is one of the Board Members in Uber said “I just joined Travis and Liane Horsey, Uber’s recently hired Chief Human Resources Officer, for the company’s weekly meeting. We spent over an hour discussing women in the workplace — and talking about the review that’s underway by Eric Holder and Tammy Albarrak into diversity and inclusion at Uber. 
Travis spoke very honestly about the mistakes he’s made — and about how he wants to take the events of the last 48-hours to build a better Uber. It was great to see employees holding managers accountable. I also view it as my responsibility to hold the leadership team’s feet to the fire on this issue.
Change doesn’t usually happen without a catalyst. I hope that by taking the time to understand what’s gone wrong and fixing it we can not only make Uber better but also contribute to improvements for women across the industry.

The Reflection

An organization exists because of its Employees and with the growing advent of time, particularly in technology the Talent pool  contains some significant count of women both as employees and as founders. Some of the great companies of the world applies “Zero Tolerance” on issues related to Code of Conduct against women employees  and that’s the reason why the Technology field is still seen as a prestigious, secured and rewarding place for a women to work and grow. 

We as a part of Startup Fraternity support and standby in support of women employees by all means, and wish that the perception (about the IT companies in the eye of parents of young women employees and society)which took so many years to build is to continue and grow in the coming times.

Keywords: Sexual harassment in Uber, Susan J Fowler, Travis Kalanick, Arianna Huffington, Uber controversy over sexual harassment, Sexual harassment at work,  Liane Horsey

E Link: https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber