2021

OB PROJECT UBER

Submitted to: Prof. Tavleen Kaur

Submitted by:

Aarush Saxena(21BSP0755)

Himanshu Rawat(21BSP0842)

Himanshu Dwivedi(21BSP0840)

Niranjan kumar(21BSP0924)

Ishank Dhamija(21BSP0844)
Organizational Behavior

Table of Content

S.NO. Topic

1 Motivation to choose UBER

2 About the Company

3 Initiatives to choose UBER

4 Recommendation/Observations

5 Conclusion

6 Limitations

7 References
Organizational Behavior

Motivation
Our team’s motivation to specifically choose Uber as our company for project was that Uber has
always been a company that not only thinks about customers and profit but also takes care of
their employees that work hard to make the company achieve various heights. Policies at Uber
for employee well-being and satisfaction are always been appreciated by various other
companies and adopted too.

During research for our project, we found that at past Uber was heavily criticized for their
policies that didn’t give any sort of preference to their employees and there were also various
incidents where employees were leaving their jobs at Uber because they were ill-treated but Uber
took this criticism in a positive manner and improved their policies and turned out to be one of
those companies that now people desire to work for. Uber has always stand apart from its
rivalries such as Ola, when it comes to employee satisfaction and well-being.

We found various policies and initiatives which are stated in the report which are special in their
own ways. Policies like Paid holidays, incentive schemes, etc. and many other policies that we
found unique about Uber from various other companies which are considering for our project
Organizational Behavior

About the Company

Uber Technologies Inc.'s explosive growth and constant controversy make it one of the most
fascinating companies to emerge over the past decade. The global ridesharing application that
was founded in 2009 now works as a modern transportation as we know it and at one point grew
to become the highest valued private startup company in the world.

Ten years after its founding, Uber went public on May 9, 2019. Though the road has been
bumpy, Uber remains a major company in the ridesharing space. In its most recent quarterly
earnings release, for Q2 fiscal year (FY) 2021, Uber reported a net income of $1.1 billion, $3.9
billion in revenue, and 1.5 billion trips on its platform.

The ease and simplicity of ordering a car fueled the app’s rising popularity. With the tap of a
button, a ride could be ordered, a GPS identified the location, and the cost was automatically
charged to the card on the user account. The San Francisco-based startup quickly became one of
the hottest companies and grew quickly. The first Uber ride was requested in 2010 and less than
two years later, in 2011, Uber had already launched internationally in Paris, where the idea for it
first took root.
Organizational Behavior

Initiatives Taken by Uber for Employees Well-Being and Satisfaction

The company believes that employees who seek opportunities for development are more
engaged, fulfilled and productive-which is one of the reasons they join any company and
contribute their time to it. Uber believes that investing in employees’ well-being and their growth
supports their performance and overall performance of the company. Giving employees a good
psychological condition to work and grow is the most essential thing.

Uber believes in making policies that are not harsh on their employees and make them feel they
are also a part of the company rather than just workers who only do their job and get paid. The
company specially gives emphasis on policies which are for employee’s satisfaction and well-
being because in the end it’s all the hard work and contribution of various employees that make
the company big. This includes:

 Paid Time off: Uber provides their employees with paid time off, some day holidays to
relax their mind and spend some time off the work to rejuvenate and come back with
more positivity and energy. This policy may sound strange at first instance but it is what
is it is, Uber believes in things that are unique and different.

 Cell Phone Allowance: Uber allows their Eligible employees to select either a corporate
mobile phone or a monthly cell phone stipend for their personal use.

 Parental leave: To provide the support parents need when welcoming a new child into
their family, Uber grants a minimum of 18 weeks of paid leave to all parents (birthing
and non-birthing), whether they have a new-born, adopted, or foster child.

 Well-being reimbursement program: The well-being reimbursement benefit is

designed to support employees’ personal health and well-being. Uber provides a monthly
value that may be claimed for reimbursement against a comprehensive list of eligible
expenses. To better support employees working from home during COVID-19, Uber
temporarily expanded this program to include certain ergonomic and home workstation
equipment as well as home and self-care accessories.

 Flexible work arrangement: Uber provides eligible employees the opportunity to

request flexible work arrangements so they may fulfil work requirements and meet
personal needs also.

 Employee assistance program (EAP): This program provides a number of services

through third parties that are confidential and free to employees and their family
members who live with them. Uber’s EAP partners Lyra and Com Psych are committed
to advancing diversity and inclusion and are proud to maintain diverse networks designed
to serve the needs of all members, including those facing LGBTQIA+ issues, life
transitions, gender identity issues, multicultural challenges, and more.
Organizational Behavior

 Breast-milk shipping: Uber partners with a vendor to enable employees who are
breastfeeding to get breast milk home to their babies while they’re traveling for business.
Uber not only cares for the well-being of its employees but also for their loved ones too.

 Family Planning and Parental Support: While growing their careers, employees are
also being provided with additional support like parental support to the employees that
are married and by giving them family planning sessions also. Uber also provides support
to employees that are soon going to be parents so that they can enjoy their new family
addition along with their work.

 Healthcare Benefits: Uber provides their employees with healthcare benefits like
medical insurance up to a certain amount and additional health care plans with coverage
including dental and vision benefits.

Other than these policies, Uber also makes sure that employees that are living with disability are
also taken care and everyone should stand for them, not only the company but other people also.

ABLE AT UBER

Ubers’s Community for Caregivers and employees is living with disability. This community of
Uber is to strengthen and sustain inclusion for employees that are living with mental, physical or
any other kind of disability.

The community has been successful in spreading awareness and makes people feel that these
people are not different and are part of our community only. It also provides wellness session to
employees including yoga, meditation etc.
Organizational Behavior

Able at Uber community enable people to take part in various skill development activities and
showcase their case talents at various stages. They also support people that are good in any kind
of art.

Uber’s Initiatives to fight against racism and bring equity among the
employees
Racism has been one of the topics that prevails in our society and also in various organizations
that hampers the well-being of the employees that face racism directly or indirectly due to
various reasons. At Uber to overcome with this problem of racism and bringing equality, the
company has formed 14 commitments policy which address eliminating racism to bring equality
in the company and the community we serve.

These 14 commitments are:

Riding our Platforms of racism

 No Commitment, No Ride: Community Guidelines of Uber strictly prohibits any sort of

racist behavior, and expects that everyone using Uber what’s expected and commits to
the rules.

 Anti-Racism education for riders and drivers: develop new anti-racism and
unconscious bias training for drivers and riders.

 Specialized customer support: Offering the customer support agents specialized

training on bias and discrimination, and commit to improving our apps to make it simpler
and easier for anyone to report discrimination issues to us.

Fighting racism with technology

 Inclusive product design: To create a new dedicated Inclusivity and Accessibility

Product Lead role to help design and build products that are inclusive and meet the needs
of our customers, no matter their race, gender, age, or ability.

 Marketplace fairness: Uber will formalize and expand its internal Fairness Working
Group of data scientists, product managers, and operations leaders to advise on how to
build products that take into account issues of fairness and equity.
Organizational Behavior

 Diverse teams for diverse customers: To further expand the pipeline of Black and other
underrepresented technical workers by broadening our internship and fellowship
programs in partnership with global NGOs.

Sustaining equity and belonging for all

 Pay equality, full stop: Uber analysed the salary data and made adjustments to achieve
pay equity on the basis of race and gender and will continue to focus on maintaining this
important measure of equity going forward.

 Double Black representation in leadership: The Company plan to double Black

representation in leadership by 2025 through pipeline development and hiring.
Leadership as those with Director titles and above, representing the 5 most senior levels
at Uber.

 Transparency on our progress: Continue to publish an annual Diversity Report and

expand it to include data on intersectionality and self-identification.

 Double the talent pipeline: Uber wants to create pathways for drivers, delivery people,
and Uber customer support staff, many of whom are people of colour, to advance their
careers.

 Training on cross-cultural management: The company understand that as an

organization it’s our responsibility to help individuals manage inclusively. Also offer
training to all Uber managers on inclusive management and cross-cultural competency.

Driving equity in the community

 $10 million to support Black-owned businesses: Uber will commit to a $10 million
investment over the next 2 years to advance the success of Black-owned small businesses
by driving demand through promotions and other merchant support.

 $0 Delivery Fee for Black-owned restaurants: In addition to extending the $0 Delivery

Fee for Black-owned restaurants for all of 2020, Uber is taking steps to more effectively
identify and highlight the diversity of restaurants on our platform, including Black-owned
restaurants, permanently.

 Double supplier spending with Black-owned businesses: To strengthen and expand the
supplier diversity program with the goal of doubling spending with Black-owned
businesses and contractors.
Organizational Behavior

Initiatives Uber has taken during the course of Covid-19 Pandemic

Employees of Uber have been and continue to be affected during the Covid-19 pandemic in
many ways. To overcome this, the company has worked upon intensively to strengthen their
work-from-home policies and found out many ways to help their employees that are
continuously serving their jobs even in this unprecedented crisis, managing both their
professional and personal lives.

At Uber, safety is a top priority. Since the earliest days of the pandemic, Uber mobilized internal
teams, listened to experts, and worked to support the health and well-being of employees,
platform users, and the cities and communities they serve. Uber will continue to be a partner in
recovery to our cities and stakeholders as it defines and turn to a new normal.

More work-from-home employees means that the company has to provide the employees with
resources, tools and all necessary support through Uber’s employee assistance program(EAP)
and also looking upon the mental health of employees.

Uber has currently extended its work-from-home policy till September 2021 in order to keep
employees safe and allowing them to work from any remote area and also planning for a future
plan taking Covid-19 in consideration.

Global Caregiver Policy

The Global Caregiver Policy at Uber is specially formed or initiated during the course of Covid-
19 pandemic in order to provide flexible options to its employees that are parents and caregivers
during their extended work-from-home period.

This Policy includes options like

 Flexible Work Timings: Caregivers or the parents can skip low-priority meetings if
needed in case of any important work and catch up later any time by a colleague or
through minutes of the meeting.

 Work Hours redistribution: The employee is required to do the work for the same
amount of hours in the week but the hours of work, day of work can be changed
accordingly like working someday less and covering the rest work next day for working
long. No restrictions will be imposed from work-from-home.
Organizational Behavior

 Change in shift: Employees can request for change in shift timings according to their
requirements and also in case of parents that are involved in homeschooling of their
child.

Cancellation of Mid-Year Performance reviews and more Emphasis on

Empathy
This was one another policy adopted by Uber during the pandemic in 2020 by cancelling their
mid-year performance reviews cycle. The Company thought that people are already suffering a
lot due to the pandemic and a lot of stress is going on, so to be less hard on employees Uber
adopted this policy.

Many things changed during the pandemic that no one ever had thought of seeing the whole
world locked down due to a deadly pandemic which affected everyone’s lives. Instead of formal
review process of employees, Uber instructed employees and managers to focus on their own
growth and adapt to our learning and development resources.

Uber encouraged employees to write down about their own feedback of the whole year and
complete a self-reflection evaluation.

Uber also let their employees to work 50% from anywhere they are residing and no need of
coming to physical office during 2020.

Work from Home(WFH) Stipend

WFH Stipend was one another initiative by Uber in which the company offered their employees
a stipend worth $500 US Dollars, for home office setup and to buy things which are necessary
for their working like internet setup, office table and chair, etc.

Some more initiatives by Uber during the pandemic :

 Free Rides to Covid-19 Vaccination Centre: Uber also became a part of the
vaccination drive in India by providing free rides to people that were going to vaccination
centers through their cab and also giving them discount coupons and in app offers.

 Supporting Local Restaurants: Majority of the restaurants shifted to take away during
the pandemic, Uber app highlighted local independent restaurants in their app and
provided leave-at-door facility to people who can’t come out due to lockdown. Uber also
started donations for restaurants that were not able to sustain during the pandemic by
offering feature in their app through which people can donate amount that will be given
to the particular restaurant.
Organizational Behavior

 Global Financial Assistance Policy: Uber launched a global financial assistance policy
for drivers and delivery people affected by COVID-19. The program provides up to 14
days of financial assistance for any driver or delivery person with an active case of
COVID-19 or who has been individually ordered to self-quarantine because they are
suspected of having an active case of COVID-19. Close to 50,000 people have received
financial assistance through this program globally.
Organizational Behavior

Suggestions/Observations for Uber

One of the most effective methods to boost employee engagement is to give remote workers a voice in the
workplace. When working remotely, this is amplified by a variety of factors such as less face-to-face
communication, less checking in with coworkers, more time spent staring at a screen rather than engaging
in physical interactions, and so on.

Yoga or fitness classes are available online.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, companies like NextJump have been offering online fitness sessions,
providing employees at least 30 minutes of free time at the start or end of the day to exercise.

Healthy food care packs

Tesla has engaged a nutritionist in their services for many years but now, with more engineers
working from home, healthy food packs have been sent out to help with keeping workers
nutritionally well.

Care packages for healthy food

Tesla has had a dietitian on staff for many years, but now that more engineers are working from
home, healthy food packets have been sent out to assist keep employees healthy, and providing
therapy sessions. Global electronic platform, Buffer has an open approach to mental health
where everything is shared allowing team members to discuss openly any mental health
challenges they are facing. This has carried on in lockdown where digital sessions were provided
for team members who were facing more recent testing times.

Practices of mindfulness
BUPA has used in-house software to help their employees track everything from nutrition to how
they are feeling, much like they did with the treatment sessions. Mindfulness is one of the
practices used to aid with anxiety and stress. Calm or Headspace accounts could be purchased for
employees to use at their leisure.

Communicate consciously and frequently

Communication is an important aspect of every organization, but it gets more important as a

company grows or moves to more remote work, as we've seen with the COVID-19 pandemic. It's
also important in helping to build employee engagement.

As a result, managers must communicate with their teams and individuals on a frequent basis.
You also don't want to overburden your personnel or end up micromanaging them. The last thing
you should want to do is stay online for the entire day; this is a bad habit to get into.
Organizational Behavior

However, constant communication and check-ins are required. Schedule a group call or
teleconference during the day, and make sure you have an agenda of issues you want to cover
and receive feedback from the entire team. Make sure that the tools you're utilizing, such as
Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Workplace by Face book, are the preferred mode of communication
on a daily basis.

Finally, make time for one-on-one calls with team members. This should be done to verify that
they have all they require to perform assignments, as well as to check in on their progress.
Nonverbal communication is crucial here; be careful to inquire about their mental health and
how you, as a manager, can assist them if they are having difficulties. In a difficult environment,
there are more approaches to increase employee engagement.

Keeping track of company and team objectives

Ensure that everyone understands the issues that the company is facing and how it plans to
overcome them and move forward

Regularly provide updates:

Consider one-on-ones to discuss an individual's performance and how the company might assist
them in growing.

Recognize accomplishments and efforts:

Make sure your employee is aware of the outcomes they're getting and the efforts they're putting
in. Thank people for their hard work by sending emails to the entire team or a larger group.

More training is needed:

This could be for certain topics they desire to pursue or if you've observed some skills that could
be improved further. Everything works together to help people achieve more and feel more
valued. Improving employee engagement will always be a critical goal for any company. The
goal for all organizations should be to find a balance between high involvement and good
performance.

The importance of well-being and communication cannot be overstated. Managers should

attempt to resolve any concerns for remote workers as fast as feasible, while also supporting their
team's mental and physical well-being and implementing better communication strategies for all
parties involved.

With Thomas, determine staff engagement levels and wellness plans.

With Thomas Engage, you can measure employee engagement and develop strategies and initiatives to
improve employee well-being, motivation, and productivity.
Organizational Behavior

With remote working becoming more common, our Managing Remote Workers report for the Thomas
Behavior exam can help you better understand your employees' communication patterns in order to keep
them engaged, motivated, and stress-free.

For drivers
Health-care benefits should be proportional to the number of hours drivers work.
Organizational Behavior

Conclusion
This Report talks about the policies and initiatives taken by Uber for the psychological well-
being of their employees and how these initiatives are important in daily working. In
Psychological well-being topics that were covered are

 Employee Satisfaction
 Employee Well-Being
 Initiatives taken during the course of pandemic
Considering the fact that employees need motivation and satisfaction from the work they are
doing, it becomes very important for the company to provide them with right environment and
conditions that not only motivates them to work but also help in maintaining their psychological
well-being. The stated initiatives by Uber for employee satisfaction, well-being and prosperity
should be looked upon by various other companies also and initiated too. Employees are the one
who makes the company successful with their hard work, dedication and experiences. Uber
follows the policies that are more orientated towards their employee benefits and well-being,
which is why they a very diverse workforce.

The Report completely covers all the aspects related to employee benefits and satisfaction in
Uber and also the initiatives taken by the company during the pandemic to support their
employees by providing them with some fixed amount of money to support their families during
Covid-19. The company also allowed their employees to work remotely from any area they are
stuck in and not forcing them to come to the office and risking their life.

The report also talks about performance and promotion initiative of Uber which states that
employees who perform exceptionally well, will be rewarded also in order to keep them satisfied
and motivated. The Character and personality of Uber’s workplace, including its social and
psychological environment and a set of shared values, behaviors, norms, and assumptions.

Key Points of the Report:

1. Able at Uber

2. Global Caregiver Policy

3. Employee Assistance Program(EAP)

4. WFH Stipend

At last, we would like to conclude that Uber has been one of those companies that care for its
employees and not just consider them as employees but as an internal part of their company. It
has always been ranked higher when it comes to policy implementation regarding psychological
Organizational Behavior

well-being of their employees and consideration. Due to these practices, Uber has been able to
gain recognition and earn profits in every country globally where they are operational. The
Report also suggests some ideas and considerations we have observed and seen that Uber can
implement in order to become more successful.
Organizational Behavior

Limitations
 The major limitations of our project were the lack of statistical data and technical data.
We were not able to analyze the company properly because of the lack of the information
and the information stated in the report are mainly taken form company’s annual report,
P&C report and ESG Reports. There was sort of information that was not completely
available to us which could have increased the quality of the report.

 Some other limitations were that our team was not able to decide whether to choose
between Uber or Ola, because both are major competitors and are equally famous but at
last we choose Uber as our company for the project as Uber has its business in various
countries across the Globe and handles employees of various domains.

 Also limitations like not directly able to talk to any employee of Uber that could have
given us some sort of we can real review about the policies that Uber mentioned for its
employees well-being, and it could have made our research more successful and report
more worth it. We also thought about adding their reviews in our project but we were
limited with only those reviews that were there online.
Organizational Behavior

References

https://s23.q4cdn.com/407969754/files/design/Uber-2020-ESG-Report-Final.pdf

https://uber.app.box.com/s/3nh58uemjnp4fa5bonld06w3flg5ckp7?uclick_id=5725
3bae-77ff-4fd3-873c-f20b9d9dc036

https://www.speakap.com/en/blog/hr-employee-experience-survey

https://www.uber.com/in/en/coronavirus/

https://www.uber.com/en-CA/blog/7-benefits-for-remote-workers/

https://www.uber.com/in/en/about/diversity/

https://www.euruni.edu/blog/companies-taking-care-employees-covid-19/

https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-
samples/toolkits/pages/sustainingemployeeengagement.aspx