His decision to take time off as CEO of Uber comes after a hard few months for the company, which has been under fire after former employee Susan Fowler alleged that Uber failed to adequately handle sexual harassment and gender discrimination complaints.
"It was clear that (my manager) was trying to get me to have sex with him, and it was so clearly out of line that I immediately took screenshots of these chat messages and reported him to HR", Susan Fowler, a former engineer at the company wrote on her blog.
Uber reportedly did make changes after Fowler's allegations, including starting a 24-hour employee hotline and firing 20 after Perkins Cole investigated complaints about sexual harassment, bullying and other workplace problems.
Uber should implement mandatory training for managers and key leaders, create a "robust" complaint process and take steps to ensure more minorities are hired, it added.
In his email, Kalanick did not specify how long he would be away from the company, but cited the need to take time off to grieve the loss of his mother, who died in a recent boating accident. Chief among them is reassigning some of Kalanick's responsibilities to other employees. Lawyers said the board should continue its search for a chief operating officer who is "diverse" and has a background in diversity and inclusion.
CEO Travis Kalanick said he will let his leadership team run the troubled ride-hailing company while he's gone. In the USA, less than a third of the company's workers are female.
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CLARIFICATION: A previous version of this story referred to a recommendation that was not included in the publicly released version of the Eric Holder report. The report seems to suggest that Uber still doesn't have an official policy laying that out.
Under Kalanick, Uber has disrupted the taxi industry in hundreds of cities - including Adelaide - and turned the San Francisco-based company into the world's most valuable startup. The company's board unanimously adopted all of the recommendations Sunday.
The company has faced concerns about its culture since Fowler's post.
Over the recent months, there has been a significant change in the top management of the company with many senior executives being fired or resigning and it seemed that it was only a matter of time before Kalanick would find himself in the wilderness, as it were.
Kalanick has been criticized for his management styles, and for allowing Uber's corporate culture to harbor some abusive behaviors. According to leaked audio the meeting obtained by Yahoo News, she said, "There's a lot of data that shows when there's one woman on the board, it's much more likely that there will be a second woman on the board". His sabbatical will contribute to a leadership void at Uber, as more than a dozen executives have left the company this year alone.
"It was inappropriate", he wrote.
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