Reaffirming our commitment to being an anti-racist company
Written byOver the past year since the unjust murder of George Floyd, the undeniable violence and injustice against the Black community has forced the world to reckon with the systemic racism that exists within our society and underscored the importance of structural change. Our support to the Black community remains unwavering, and our commitment to being an anti-racist company is stronger than ever. Today, we are sharing our progress on our anti-racism commitments and how we plan to continue to fight against racism and inequality both within, and outside our company.
Ridding our platform of racism
- Together with experts, we are developing new anti-racism training for drivers and riders. Last week, we kicked off our first pilot in Brazil with one of our local partners, Promundo, providing virtual training to all riders and earners in the country. We will leverage these learnings to further shape our training for our users around the world.
- We’ve made it easier for users to report incidents by adding a standalone option in the app to report racism and discrimination, and we have enhanced our processes of handling discrimination incidents to further improve the customer experience and actioning.
Fighting Racism with Technology
- We hired our first ever Inclusive Design Lead, Erica Ellis, to help design and build products that are inclusive and meet the needs of our customers, no matter your race, gender, age, sexual orientation, or ability. We are also creating additional roles to support this important work.
- We launched a Fairness Research Team, dedicated to measuring and understanding the impact that our pricing, matching, and safety products have on users from underserved communities. Additionally, we have expanded our Fairness Working Group to include additional members, encompassing lawyers, data scientists, product managers, policy experts, and members of Uber’s ERGs, to capture a greater diversity of perspectives when conducting fairness assessments.
- We know we need diverse teams to serve our diverse customer base around the globe, which is why we have expanded our fellowship program ‘Uber Career Prep’ beyond the United States, to accept applicants studying at universities in Brazil and Canada. A member of Uber’s Executive Leadership Team will participate as an instructor in each workshop. This year’s program includes 41 diverse fellows, 23 of whom are women. Each of the fellows has a 1:1 mentor from Uber’s engineering team for the duration of 2021 and is guaranteed the opportunity to interview for a full-time or internship role with Uber upon completion of the program.
Sustaining Equity and Belonging for All
- Four years ago, we analyzed our salary data and made adjustments to achieve pay equity on the basis of race and gender. In 2020, women at Uber globally earned $1.00 for every $1.00 earned by men performing similar job functions. In the same time period in the US, in aggregate, employees from underrepresented racial backgrounds earned $1.00 for every $1.00 earned by non-underrepresented peers at the same job level. We will continue to focus on maintaining this important measure of equity going forward.
- To increase Black representation in leadership, we have made changes to our hiring strategy by introducing dedicated sourcing time with Executive Talent Acquisition teams, committing 2-4 weeks upfront to proactively build a diverse pipeline of talent. We also started applying the Mansfield Rule -a commitment to interviewing a candidate pool which matches or exceeds market supply for diversity- and we created an Uber Executive Networking program to proactively cultivate relationships between members of our Executive Leadership team and external female, Black and Latinx Executives.
- We understand it’s our responsibility as an organization to help individuals manage inclusively. Starting June, we will offer inclusive management and cross-cultural competency training to the first 2,000 people managers at Uber.
- To advance the mobility of internal emerging leaders into leadership opportunities, we achieved 50% diverse representation in our mid-career level development program which equips participants with key skills to grow into senior leadership roles within the next 12 months.
Driving Equity in the Community
- As one of the first non-financial institutions, we invested $50 million in support of minority and underserved communities: $25 million was committed to the MDI Keeper’s Fund -a private investment fund sponsored by the National Bankers Association- and we allocated $25 million of unrestricted cash via deposits to qualifying MDIs.
- We committed 10 million free or discounted rides to help make sure that transportation is never a barrier to getting the vaccine. We launched this initiative in partnership with the National Urban League, National Action Network, Morehouse School of Medicine, and LULAC—organizations with deep ties to the communities of color that have been disproportionately hurt by the pandemic.
- To help consumers support Black-owned businesses on Uber Eats, we committed to $0 delivery fees for all orders from these restaurants in 2020. In total, 3.5M $0 delivery fee trips took place last year. And we have taken steps to more effectively identify and highlight Black-owned restaurants on Uber Eats permanently, with consulting and verification support from EatOkra, a Black-owned restaurant aggregator company working across the US.
- In partnership with EatOkra and local community organizations and Black business leaders in Harlem and Washington DC, we’ve launched public space popups (Harlem & DC) highlighting Black owned restaurants to help provide additional earning opportunities and to celebrate the Black community. We plan to expand this work to additional locations this year.
In addition to last year’s commitments, we also expanded some of our existing efforts. In 2019, we tied executive compensation to our D&I metrics to make sure those at the highest levels are held accountable for this important work. This year, we expanded this accountability model and introduced D&I objectives for our top 50 leaders across the company to support Uber’s overall diversity objectives.
We also stood up against increased hate and violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. We pledged $500K to support the important work of the AAPI community working with local organizations in the community. And we partnered with Hollaback to provide bystander intervention resources to those on our platform.
While we have made strides in our efforts, we know we still have a long way to go. We’re committed to keeping you informed on our ongoing efforts and we’ll share more updates here in the months to come.