What can other HR professionals learn from Uber to ensure
that their company doesn’t become the next culture exposé, dam-aging
its culture and recruitment strategy?
ENSURE A POSITIVE CULTURE IS BEING BUILT
FROM THE TOP DOWN
Every organization will have its own unique concept of the culture.
For some business models, a culture of flexibility and collaboration
is the most effective way to achieve organizational goals, while for
others it might be an agile working methodology. In any case, it is
always the senior leaders who set the tone as those beneath them
naturally emulate their values and behaviours. As such, it is vital
to ensure that those given these positions of power buy into the
company’s “right” culture. Cultural compatibility tests can be built
into recruitment and promotion processes so that unbalanced, in-appropriate
cultures can be avoided.
IDENTIFY THOSE LOOKING ONLY FOR INDIVIDUAL
SUCCESS
Unfortunately, some companies employ people deliberately with-holding
critical information and trying to sabotage the careers of
others to get ahead. Of course, attracting, engaging and retaining
high performers is crucial to drive continuous growth and success,
but not if it becomes a culture of individual success at any cost.
Pulse surveys, 360-degree feedback and data on internal mobility
patterns, such as requests to move departments, can help monitor
for toxic individuals and dynamics.
DON’T RELY EXCLUSIVELY ON ATTRITION FIGURES
TO SPOT PROBLEMS
During her time at Uber, Fowler estimated that her team of 150
engineers went from 25 per cent women to 3 per cent. Alongside
this, she highlighted sexual harassment, threats of retaliation for
reporting it and discrimination. In a world where diversity is di-rectly
linked to business success and HR leaders are taking on a
more strategic role, spotting and resolving such issues is important
– but not always easy. Employees may tolerate such behaviours
because rewards can make reporting incidents or even leaving the
organization difficult. Attrition figures should not exclusively be
used as the basis for analysis. Multiple data streams, such as per-formance,
promotion, salary, hiring and engagement, should be
used alongside direct questioning around inclusion and respect on
employment surveys to monitor and test for these types of issues.
ENSURE THAT MANAGERS AND EMPLOYEES
DIGITIZE AND DOCUMENT EVERYTHING
Fowler mentions that despite a perfect performance score, her
request to transfer from a team was blocked because of “undocu-mented
performance problems.” In today’s digitally enabled word,
there is no longer any room for things going undocumented. End-to-
end holistic HR tools have been specifically designed to ensure
that every aspect of an individual’s career – whether soft or hard,
public or private – is officially recorded and taken into account.
While it doesn’t look like this scandal has affected app usage or
downloads, there is speculation that it will harm the company’s
recruitment strategy. This a serious issue in Silicon Valley, where
finding capable engineering talent is hard and represents the dif-ference
between life and death for a tech organization. n
Sarah Andresen is the head of people science at Fairsail, a global HR
and people management system provider.
workplace culture
ATTRACTING, ENGAGING
AND RETAINING
HIGH PERFORMERS
IS CRUCIAL TO DRIVE
CONTINUOUS GROWTH
AND SUCCESS, BUT
NOT IF IT BECOMES A
CULTURE OF INDIVIDUAL
SUCCESS AT ANY COST.
Pressmaster/Shutterstock.com
Refusing to remain silent: a blog
post about discrimination at
Uber may harm the company’s
recruitment strategy
40 ❚ APRIL 2017 ❚ HR PROFESSIONAL
