Uber Case Study
Executive Summary
By Gina Hopkins
PSY 3541, Final Project
Dr, Cooper
Summer 2020
Uber’s Employee vision, value and loyalty
★ Every business may have disgruntled employees and former staff can become
“naysayers.” Those ”sour grapes” are not unusual. Yet, recent rumors of
reported mistreatment surfaced at Uber in ways nobody expected.
★ Is it possible that “the good old boy’s club” morphed into the start-up
environment? As accusations came forward, and Uber executives dismissed
the warning signs. Maybe HR didn't take action, or perhaps they looked the
other way too often, and perhaps HR was simply too busy to notice the growing
tide and manage down to the details.
★ Suddenly, the CEO was caught off guard, and had to take “extended” time off.
This sent shock waves across investors, customers, and staff alike.
How is Uber Culture, and can it be changed?
Uber culture has many things that work against them, such as Lyft competition and dissatisfaction from
taxi cab drivers. There are few important questions that this company should focus on:
★
★
into what tradeoffs the company needs to look to evaluate its values to make its stakeholders happy
and its employees more motivated to perform better,
as well as how could individual staff, work teams, and the overarching organization as a whole be
involved to understand what to do now to improve Uber’s culture and look into its values as a
company,
★
at the same time how Uber could successful measure these changes,
★
and finally what would indicate that the intervention in its culture and values had successfully
addressed the most important problems needing to be changed to ensure this company’s successful
growth
★
What might be a realistic practical business solution involve and entail for Uber?
“It started as a simple idea: What if
you could request a ride from your
phone? But what began as just a
thought quickly grew into a global
brand focused on helping move you
toward opportunity out in the world.”
(www.uber.com)
Who is Uber: some facts
Founders: Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp.
Company Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States.
Funding received by Uber: $22.2 Billion. (as of December 2017).
Company Valuation: Over $70 Billion.
Number of Users: More than 50 Million.
Number of registered drivers: Approximately 7 Million (as of November
2017).
Average number of daily Uber Trips in the US: 4 Million (45
rides/second) (Uber’s Executive summary)
Uber revenue and usage
80%
Uber Rides
15%
Uber Eats
5%
Uber Freight
https://www.businessofa
pps.com/data/uber-statist
ics/
Working Conditions at Uber
★
Uber has so many good things going; Demand continues, and scandal hasn’t devastated
business so far. Despite many allegations about Uber’s safety, they aren’t going out of
business anytime soon.
★
But competitors like Lyft are gaining market share and some investors have pulled out.
★
Some customers have even left, boycotting, reporting to friends and family that they can get
around just fine (without variable demand pricing).
★
Potential recruits are wary of working at a firm where allegations of mistreatment and abuse
characterize the day-to-day environment.
★
Many of the “founding few” are still among the most powerful. But some of them worry that
Uber may not be the amazing place to work it once had been heralded, or at least the future
and draw has become less brighter.
Uber’s strengths and weakneses comparison
Favorable
Unfavorable
Internal
Opportunities:
employees and
stakeholders
satisfaction
abuse characterize the
day-to-day
environment.
External
Strengths: Demand
continues
Competition gets
stronger
Going above and beyond to compete and looking
more into a company's values, and perhaps
looking more into satisfaction of their employees.
For example in May 2020, Uber laid off 3500 of
Addressing issues posted by
this Case Study
their employees, about 14% of its workforce, and
informed them the same day of this with an
announcement through an online Zoom call.
Many of their employees were “stunned” with this
1.
What tradeoffs Uber needs to be
approach.
“Potential recruits are wary of working at a firm
evaluated?
where allegations of mistreatment and abuse
characterize the day-to-day environment.” (Case
Study)
This environment has to improve.
The HR department should be more involved in the
culture of the company and manage the flood of
complaints, instead of the CEO taking time off and
worrying the main supporters of the growing
company: the investors, customers (stakeholders),
Addressing issues posted by
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and employees.
“Uber must continue to be relentless to ward off
competition, and address growing waves of
legislative initiatives by cities and municipalities
2. How might individual staff, work teams,
and the overarching organization as a
whole be involved to understand what to
do now?
limiting access.” (New York Times). For future Uber
has to change its perspective to show that drivers
are Uber’s competitive advantage, and they will
have to feel more connected with the company and
its new business model, as well as high turnover
problem must dissipate.
The change of the company’s culture could
be measured in two ways, employee
Addressing issues posted by
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satisfaction (through surveys), and by
researching the company’s current model
through the eyes of stakeholders (investors
3. How could successful change
be measured?
and customers).
The one of the most important problems to
be addressed was customer safety. Every
company should address this sooner than
Addressing issues posted by
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later; in Uber’s case, there were too many
complains about sexual harassment, and
extra cleaning charges from underpaid
4. What might indicate that the
intervention had addressed the
most important problems needing to
be addressed?
drivers.
Uber’s approach to safety
●
●
●
●
In 2018 Uber produced its executive summary: US Safety Report, where they
blamed media coverage to cover the sexual harassment at Uber as “as drivers
the alleged offenders, our data shows that drivers report assaults at roughly
the same rate as riders across the 5 most serious categories of sexual assault.
Divers are victims, too”.
They also stated in the same report that “The vast majority (99.9%) of Uber
trips end without any safety-related issue at all.”
They produced their own statistics to prove their point,
Despite Uber’s own defense, they invest vastly in the rider’s safety by adding
to their app: emergency button, Ridecheck, and Real-time ID check among
others.
Here are few steps that this company already took to
address it:
●
When scheduling a ride with Uber using their app,
neither driver or rider can see each other's phone
numbers.
Addressing issues posted by
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●
Once a trip is completed, the Uber’s app also
protects rider information by concealing specific
pickup and dropoff location information in driver’s
trip history.
5. What might a realistic practical
business solution involve and entail?
●
The rider has also an option to give a pin code to
their driver to verify that they are in the right car,
They also can check the picture of the driver as
The number one priority of Uber should
be customer safety.
well. The trip won’t officially start until the driver
enters the code. This feature is Uber’s response
to the murder of student Samantha Josephson.
Overall recommendations
★ Uber’s culture included too much focus on aggressive growth and intense
competition, and failure to prioritize cooperation compliance with many
regulations.
★ Uber should promote more internal transparency that can result in teams
that are more coordinated and have more knowledge of internal sharing.
★ Uber should focus more on its employee satisfaction than rigorous
competitiveness, and look out more for infractions committed by its top
performers. This way the internal and external cultures would change to
more friendly. This could be a new definition of being competitive and have
positive values at the same time.
Bibligraphy
Aadmont, Michel, (2016), “Industrial/Organizational Psychology, an
Applied Approach”, Cengage Learning, Cengage.com/global
Isaac, Mike, (2017), Inside Uber’s Aggressive, Unrestrained Workplace
Culture. The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/technology/uber-workplace-culture.h
tml
Uber (2018), US Safety Report, Executive Summary,
https://www.uber-assets.com/image/upload/v1575580685/Documents/Saf
ety/UberUSSafetyReport_201718_ExecutiveSummary.pdf