Monday, 27 March 2017

Innovation can only go so far


Despite the current lawsuits (both class action from cab companies in various cities and personal lawsuits from victims of the various criminal actions of drivers), Uber is a very innovative tech company that some would say has revolutionized the transportation delivery industry. Cost wise it has saved myself a ton of money on cabs and its convenience is unmatched by any other companies. But is everything about Uber as great as it seems? In the following article, it tells the story of an Susan Fowler who was an engineer that had been working at Uber and was sexually harassed by her manager. When she immediately took the issue to the HR department at Uber nothing was done to the manager as they claimed it was his first offence and he was a top performing employee. The article goes on to discuss the anarchy that took place over the year that Fowler spent at Uber. She discusses how no one within departments were getting along and Fowler describes “…a game-of-thrones political war…” happening with upper management that trickled down to the lower ranks within the company.

            Innovation is all about improvement and creating more efficient solutions (which can happen in several different ways). Within such an innovative company like Uber how are situations that are happening within this article taking place? Is there a way that companies can innovate to avoid these issues and in turn operate as a more efficient company? Obviously there are companies out there that have great HR relations with their employees and the day-to-day operations of the company are executed with ease. So what is Uber doing wrong and why are these issues happening within such an innovative company?


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

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