Must address uncomfortable conversations if you want inclusion: Bo Young Lee, Uber

“One of the biggest challenges that companies face is about having uncomfortable conversations,” says Bo Young Lee, the diversity and inclusion officer at ride-hailing company Uber. Lee, the first to be appointed in the role about a couple of years ago when Uber got entangled in a flurry of scandals, talks about the business case behind diversity and why inclusion is important to attract young talent. Edited excerpts:

What are the biggest challenges for diversity that corporations face worldwide?
One of the biggest challenges that companies face is about having uncomfortable conversations — like if there is sexism or racial and ethnic prejudice what do they look like or how does classism look like. Some of these topics will challenge people’s core belief, but you have to address that in the workplace if you want inclusion.


Did you face any challenge in your bringing about diversity and inclusion?
No one said to me this isn’t a priority. People came and said how do I prioritise diversity and inclusion among million other challenges that we have, such as meeting the profitability goals. I wanted to show to the leaders that by meeting the diversity and inclusion goals, they will meet their growth goals. So, my work was to make them see D&I (diversity and inclusion) as something that was an enabler, not as something extra.

We know that our journey is going to be a long one and we know that no company changes overnight … But diversity and inclusion is going to be absolutely critical for our business going forward … regardless of where our business takes us, diversity and inclusion will be a key part of that.

So, what was the business case that you made?
We have over 7 million customers that engage on our platform every single day and we have over 3 million driver partners and between them they represent every gamut of diversity — ethnic, racial, gender, sexual orientation and we want to make sure that we were making products that were in keeping with this diverse set of people — that was really the business case. Diversity and inclusion is imperative for us because of the inherent diversity on our platform and is woven into what we do. We have 27,000 employees across the world and 40% of that is women … we would love to get 50-50 someday.

Do you have a strategy to build a pipeline of woman leaders from within?
The focus is on how you hire, how you promote and how you retain. From the hiring perspective, we are speaking to a diverse slate of candidates with at least one woman and other underrepresented persons on the slate. From a promotion perspective, we have started providing our leaders with more transparency about the pipeline of talent — giving the representation of women on the list of people they have eligible for promotion — and by giving our leaders more data as we expect them make more informed decisions. We brought about these changes a year ago and that helped close the promotion gap for women. And from the retention perspective, we feel that retention only comes when you build an inclusive culture. Last year, we enhanced our parental leave policy where we provide 18 weeks of parental leave to all of our new parents — female or male.

Does diversity and inclusion help attract young talent?
I feel that it is a huge draw for younger talent. As young talent is coming into companies, they want to work with companies that encourage inclusion. Like many tech companies, we have a young workforce but we want the voices of all generations being able to contribute to our workforce.