On Tuesday, Uber held a special press conference hosted by Arianna Huffington together with the Chief HR officer Liane Hornsey, North American operations lead Rachel Holt and company communications lead Rachel Whetstone. Hornsey, Holt, and Whetstone are three of Huffington's highest ranking female staff. The press conference is said to be an attempt to counter-message all the negative information and accusations of sexism.
According to CNBC, Huffington is a board member of Uber who is overseeing the firm's "urgent investigation" regarding the sexual harassment and gender bias issues. The co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post said that the sexual harassment concern isn't a "systemic problem" at a ride-hailing company such as Uber. "Yes, there were some bad apples, unquestionably. But this is not a systemic problem," Huffington said.
The comment of the board member came after a former employee of Uber posted allegations about the company last month. Striking questions with concern to gender bias as well as sexual harassment are the issues included in the post of the employee. Investors also called for Uber to change its culture immediately. What more important is, according to Huffington, is that "women, minorities, everyone" feel more comfortable and being put in the right place.
According to TechCrunch, Huffington also mentioned that she is going to be holding the firm's feet to the fire but with respect and regard to their commitment. She also said that there’s no any room for “brilliant jerks” at Uber and that the main goal is not just to “fix” what’s broken but to make it as “the most admired workplace to work at.” Uber's board as well as the entire company, is committed to accepting whatever findings U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder delivers, and that any results of his investigation will surely be shared publicly.
In behalf of Uber, Huffington also addressed the issue of whether the company ever considered Travis Kalanick leaving his role as a CEO which is responsible for the existing problems. Huffington dismissed the press conference and all the discussion of any such hypotheticals by the board and praised Kalanick’s CEO role in creating Uber as its primary success story.
