Mediaboss Marketing

Uber hired former attorney general Eric Holder to give it some advice about its scandal-ridden workplace. Predictably, much of that advice turned out to be more politically correct than legally sound, much like the Justice Department when he was running it. Alas, the Uber board has already announced that it will adopt Mr. Holders recommendations.

In particular, Mr. Holder wants Uber to get its numbers right, by hiring more underrepresented minorities and women. And so: The Head of Diversity (or Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer) should set goals with respect to annual improvements in diversity and regularly publish data on Ubers diversity and inclusion numbers to judge how the company is meeting its goals.

Mr. Holder recommends that Uber adopt some version of the Rooney Rule, which is illegal, since it requires the sorting of job applicants by race, ethnicity, and sex. Perversely, he also recommends that Uber have blind resume review that is, resumes that have had all indicators of race, ethnicity, and sex removed from them which is a fine idea but flatly inconsistent not only with the Rooney Rule but with the rest of his recommendations. Those recommendations, for example, urge setting and meeting diversity goals and then rewarding and punishing (recognizing and holding accountable, meaning getting bonuses and getting fired, see recommendation II.D) managers based on metrics that are tied to improving diversity. In a word, quotas.

Candidates who are themselves diverse is one quality the board should look for in the new chief operating officer. Theres plenty in the recommendations on unconscious bias but nothing on the quite conscious bias that would be required by them. Tellingly, Mr. Holder criticizes the companys embrace of Meritocracy and Toe-Stepping as a corporate value.

There is a simple choice to be made here, folks, whether were talking about jobs or university admissions or government contracts or whatever. We can strive for nondiscrimination, which is what fairness and the law require, or we can mandate diversity, which inevitably means politically correct discrimination, which is in turn neither fair nor legal. We cant have both. Nondiscrimination will lead to more diversity if the status quo was politically incorrect discrimination, but it is nondiscrimination that must be the aim, not a predetermined bean-count.

Originally posted here:
Eric Holder's Uber Diversity Advice | National Review - National Review

After four months immersed in the muck of Ubers corporate culture, former US attorney general Eric Holder and his colleagues issued a list of recommendations for the beleaguered ride-share company Tuesday (June 13).

If theyre implemented, the suggestionswhich run the gamut from when the office serves shared meals to major changes to the structure of its boardmay help Uber regain the confidence of its investors, employees, and customers. But they also form the template for the governance and human-resources policy of the ideal modern company, most of which should be considered by all corporations. Here are some of the keys:

Holder recommends that Uber install an independent chairman, long a cherished cause for good-governance advocates. An independent chair can provide oversight and scrutiny, and protect a company from self-dealing from its CEO. While Uber CEO Travis Kalanick doesnt also serve as chairmana common, and compromising, practice at US companiesthe position is held by Garrett Camp, who co-founded Uber with Kalanick. That close connection means Camp cant serve as an independent check on Ubers management, as Holder recommends.

Holder also suggests Uber add more independent board membersand there may be at least one board vacancy, as of June 13as well as create an ethics oversight committee. It should also beef up its audit committee with an independent auditor or ombudsman who can bring significant compliance or harassment issues to the attention of the Audit Committee without having to go through management or the CEO.

Advocates for effective management have understood for decades that executive pay should be tied to the performance of the company. In recent years however, theres been a recognition that tying pay to financial metrics like share prices or earnings-per-share can distort the goals of the CEO, pushing them toward short-term goals at the expense of the companys long-term health. In fact, research shows that companies that use non-financial incentives, like employee turnover, out-perform companies that dont. Holder recommends Uber include incentives for adherence to ethical business practices, and progress toward building a diverse workforce, part of executive pay packages.

Silicon Valley is wrestling with how to improve hiring practices, and Holders recommendations square with some of the best new practices urged by experts like Iris Bohnet, a behavioral economist at Harvard and author of What Works, a guide to promoting inclusive work places. Uber should implement hiring training, so interviewers are aware of their unconscious biases, and questions should be standardized, so candidate responses can be measured fairly, Holder says. Resumes of job candidates should be blinded, so their reviewers dont see clues about gender and race.

Holder also recommends Uber adopt a version of the Rooney Rule, a practice used in the NFL that requires that at least one minority candidate be interviewed for every opening for a head coach. Uber should include at least one woman or under-represented minority in every pool of job candidates. The company should also require that a woman or minority be included on every interview panel.

Read this next: How to really reform a toxic culture, a Uber or anywhere else

The rest is here:
The official recommendations for reforming Uber describe the perfect modern company - Quartz

New York Times

Uber Report: Eric Holder's Recommendations for Change New York Times Uber's reputation has suffered in recent months because of issues over its workplace culture. Credit Eric Gay/Associated Press. Here are the main recommendations for improving Uber's workplace culture as laid out in a report after an inquiry by Eric H ... Eric Holder is the disappointed dad Uber desperately needsQuartz Eric Holder Recommends Broad Set Of Changes To Uber's Company CultureNPR 10 Things You Need to Know From Eric Holder's Uber ReportFortune Washington Post -Breitbart News -Business Insider -Susan J. Fowler all 423 news articles »

Read more from the original source:
Uber Report: Eric Holder's Recommendations for Change - New York Times

Apparently, some things never change.

On Tuesday, at an Uber all-hands meeting discussing the recommendations from former U.S. attorney general Eric Holder's law firm Covington & Burling on how the ride-hailing startup can fix its culture, a company board member kicked things off with a sexist joke.

When Arianna Huffington, who also sits on Uber's board, pointed out that adding a female board member increases the odds of bringing on an additional woman, David Bonderman laughed off the evidence. "Actually, what it shows is that it's much more likely to be more talking," he said according to an audio recording obtained by Yahoo .

Huffington let the joke goOh. Come on, David"but the room, according to New York Times reporter Mike Isaac , "was aghast."

NBC News correspondent Jo Ling Kent reports that Bonderman, a founding partner of private equity firm TPG Capital, later apologized in an email and called his comment disrespectful and inappropriate.

Holder and his law firm were retained by Uber back in February to investigate company practices after former Uber engineer Susan Fowler published a blog post detailing what she described as sexual harassment and the lack of a suitable response by senior managers.

Fowler herself called the investigation "all optics."

Subscribe to The Broadsheet, Fortune's daily newsletter about the most powerful women.

Earlier on Tuesday, Kalanick announced that he's taking an extended leave of absence to "work on Travis 2.0," a decision that he says stemmed from the need to grieve for his mother.

In an email to his employees, Kalanick wrote:

The ultimate responsibility, for where weve gotten and how weve gotten here rests on my shoulders. There is of course much to be proud of but there is much to improve. For Uber 2.0 to succeed there is nothing more important than dedicating my time to building out the leadership team. But if we are going to work on Uber 2.0, I also need to work on Travis 2.0 to become the leader that this company needs and that you deserve.

Fortune has reached out to Uber for comment and will update this post with any response.

Visit link:
Uber Board Member Made a Sexist Joke While Discussing Eric Holder's Report - Fortune

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., lamented on Tuesday that the days of elected lawmakers are increasingly being filled up with hearings to explore the latest round of stories about President Trump and Russia, stories that are often based on unnamed sources.

"It does seem as well that every unnamed source story somehow gets a hearing," he said at Tuesday's Senate Intelligence Committee hearing with Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

He said he was just in a hearing earlier that day with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who was also asked whether he and Sessions had talked at all about the Russia probe, from which Sessions has recused himself.

"He was very clear that he has never had conversations with you about that, and that you have never requested conversations about that," Lankford said.

"He was also peppered with questions about the latest rumor of the day, that is somehow the president is thinking about firing Robert Mueller and getting rid of him," Lankford added. In that hearing, Rosenstein said only he can fire Special Counsel Bob Mueller, and said it's not something he's thinking about."

"No one has any idea where the latest unnamed source story of the day is coming from, but somehow it's grabbing all the attention," Lankford said.

Lankford also dismissed the criticism from Democrats that Sessions was not reading out his private conversations with President Trump, and said former Attorney General Eric Holder routinely declined to detail his conversations with President Barack Obama.

"There seems to be a short memory about some of the statements Eric Holder would and would not make to any committee in the House or the Senate, and would or would not turn over documents," Lankford said.

Link:
James Lankford: 'Every unnamed source story somehow gets a ... - Washington Examiner