In the meantime, Uber has fired more than 20 employees after its own harassment probe, Bloomberg reports. The firm also has required that 31 employees undergo counseling or training and gave seven employees written warnings, according to an Uber spokesman.
The issues range from harassment and discrimination to retaliation and other HR concerns. Perkins Coie, a law firm that is leading an investigation, also is examining 215 human-resources claims. It has taken no action on 100 cases, but was still looking over 57.
Liane Hornsey, Uber CHRO, concluded after an almost five month internal investigation that the sexism and discrimination one former employee blogged about is no worse when compared to other companies, according to USA Today.
Uber hired Hornsey Jan. 03 and she has held more than 200 "listening tour" sessions since February. Susan Fowler is the former employee who blogged in February about her supervisor propositioning her for sex on her first official work day and HR doing nothing. But what really is troubling Uber employees is compensation, the performance review process and the sense that Uber does not completely appreciate their work, Hornsey said, based on the listening tour.
"They need more love and respect from the company," Hornsey said. "That's my sense of what's wrong." While Hornsey noted that Fowler’s blog account "shocked me," she said "this didn’t come up as an issue" during the listening sessions. "It wasn't one of our big themes," she said. "Other things came up that are in that area, that our values are masculine and a little aggressive, but the harassment issue, I just didn't find that at all."
Fowler took Hornsey and Uber board member, Arianna Huffington, to task in her own tweet June 6, according to Vanity Fair. "Arianna and Liane to press: there is no systemic sexual harassment, just Susan. External lawyers: there are 215 cases of sexual harassment," Fowler tweeted.
While 215 claims were being investigated, there was no indication of how many of these are actually for sexual harassment, Vanity Fair noted.