Great minds don’t think alike: How Uber is raising the bar for diversity data in tech
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Executive summary
In 2019, Uber — the world’s largest rideshare company — set out to better understand the demographic make-up of its employee population. However, when your organization spans more than dozens of countries, that seemingly simple task can get complex. For example, how do you define race in regions where race isn’t recognized as a construct? Understanding that this data would be foundational to building a culture of inclusion, Uber’s Inclusion, Diversity, Equity & Awareness (IDEA) Team persevered, and the Global Self-Identification (GSID) Survey was born.
Uber initially committed to transparency in diversity as part of a slate of initiatives instituted by CEO Dara Khosrowshahi who set the company up for a sweeping cultural reboot with a heavy emphasis on accountability, upon taking office in 2017.
Five years in, Uber’s GSID Survey has set a benchmark for how to identify, and thus better serve, underrepresented employee populations (URPs) in tech and beyond.
The survey asks full-time Uber employees in more than 50 countries to identify themselves across multiple demographic categories, including race, gender, sexual orientation, level of education, caregiver, disability, and military status. Depending on local regulations, some questions were tailored or omitted.
The payoff? Uber can use this granular data to create or modify benefits that better serve employee needs and analyze trends in hiring, promotion, and retention as they relate to URPs (who often leave tech faster than they arrive). Uber can now also invite employees to participate in career development or DEI-related programs based on their demographic categories and provide meaningful data to employee resource groups (ERGs) to drive more effective programming.
Dyan Ferraris, Head of People Science & Strategy for Uber’s Global IDEA Team, spearheaded the program. She says the urgency of the project was clear from the outset. “Building and deploying GSID wasn’t really a question of if. It was almost entirely a question of how.” She explains:
Initiatives like GSID are vital for driving meaningful change and ensuring that our workplace reflects the diverse world we operate in. The data we collected initially (gender globally and race in the US) did not fully capture the complex diversity of our employees. We recognized that to diversify, grow, and retain Uber’s workforce, we needed the transparency that only accurate, global data can provide. The program as it stands now was created to expand the demographic categories we ask our employees to voluntarily disclose, and to help ensure country-specific relevance. By understanding the diverse backgrounds and experiences of our employees, we can implement tailored strategies and keep a pulse on the needs of different communities, which are crucial steps on our mission to create a truly inclusive and equitable workplace.
To ensure it was asking the right questions regionally, the IDEA Team turned to local experts. For example, ERG leads, regional DEI Business Partners, and regional Human Resource Business Partners in Asia helped the team identify local determinants of privilege. Then, the team cross-checked the draft survey with departments including Privacy, Employment Legal, and Internal Communications as well as with leaders across functions. It continues to iterate every year, incorporating employee feedback and buy-in prior to launch.
If data integrity and compliance on a global scale was one major hurdle, another was getting Uber’s 30,000+ employees to voluntarily share personal information. The team opted to build trust through transparency by educating employees on what data was being collected, how the company planned to use the information, how it would be protected, and who would have access to it. It also linked to a wealth of information and comprehensive FAQs on Uber’s intranet. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the team followed through, sharing learnings from GSID with Uber’s employees across multiple channels.
This strategy seems to be working. GSID Survey participation rates have steadily increased, with 54% of Uber’s employees completing the survey in 2023, a marked increase from the 27% of employees who participated in the inaugural survey in 2019.
According to Ferraris, the process of building and refining GSID was so enlightening, and of such interest to her peers in the DEI space, that the team felt compelled to share their learnings, including an early preview at a 2023 Catalyst Expert Community event. In a series of white papers (the first, “Global Self-Identification — Helping Drive Equity in the Workplace through Data,” was released in June 2024), the team is detailing everything from their biggest obstacles and how they solved them, to their methodologies and key findings. The goal, Ferraris says, is “to help our colleagues learn from our best practices, while addressing the stigma surrounding Self-ID, emphasizing its importance, and demonstrating how it can help us create a more accurate workforce picture, ultimately fostering inclusion.”
Feedback has been positive all around. Ferraris’s colleagues are grateful to have a turn-key template ready to be rolled out within their organizations. She adds, “We’ve also received emails from Uber employees thanking us for the wide range of demographic categories included in the survey, saying they make them feel ‘seen and heard.’”
While working to help other companies lay the groundwork for increased diversity, results from the GSID Survey are already helping to make inroads for Uber employees in-house.
Christine Stout, HR Business Partner, Delivery, has been Global Co-Chair of Uber’s Veterans ERG for the last four years. She reports that data gleaned from GSID helped her ERG connect with previously unknown segments of the employee population. Stout says:
The identification of the "P" in MVP [an acronym for Military Veterans & Partners] was made possible through GSID. Traditionally, the Veterans at Uber ERG was predominantly male, heavily US based, and exclusively veterans. Through GSID, we realized there was a population of military partners at Uber that we were not connected to. With this data we were able to reach a whole new demographic with unique challenges and needs. As a result, we have advocated for relevant benefits, partnered with the business on bringing military spouses onto the platform as drivers or couriers, and even recently, it’s helped us find someone to continue to represent military spouses as part of our broader aspirations.
But Uber isn’t just connecting with diverse employees already onboard; the company’s focus on hiring, promoting, and retaining employees from URP groups has been in the works for years. In 2021, Uber instituted its own version of the Mansfield Rule, committing to a candidate pool that matches or exceeds market supply for diversity. Additionally, 30% of candidates considered for significant leadership roles at Uber must identify as being from a URP. Perhaps most critically, the company’s leadership is well-positioned to drive change. Uber recently established an Equity Leadership Council composed of senior leaders responsible for guiding Uber’s diversity efforts, and a portion of executive compensation is tied to progress against value-related and DEI goals.
Christine Stout agrees that Uber’s focus on diversity has grown substantially since she joined the company eight years ago — and it’s only helping the business:
As an HR professional advising our internal leaders on their talent strategies, the GSID and related IDEA workstreams are imperative in guiding our actions and choices related to our people. The decisions are more well-informed, the outcomes for our teams are stronger, and the business results are better.
Uber is continuously raising the bar by measurably increasing equity, and insights from GSID will continue to drive innovative decision-making and business outcomes by bringing diverse voices to the table.