Uber to hire 800 women techies for two new programmes by next year

The ride-hailing firm said it has gained by hiring women techies in terms of improving quality and productivity

At a time when many big tech companies are laying off employees due to macroeconomic uncertainty, ride-hailing firm Uber is planning to hire 800 more women techies by next year.

The recruitment is specifically for two programmes that Uber unveiled this year. There is uReturn, a programme to onboard women techies with roles such as product managers and engineers for full-time roles after a career break. The firm also unveiled Pinnacle, a pilot programme targeted towards returning women by providing flexible and remote working options in the areas of tech operations, mapping and machine learning. Across these two programmes, Uber has already onboarded around 150 women. It now has plans to hire 800 more by next year.

“We would quadruple these to 800 next year,” said Megha Yethadka, senior director, program management tech and head of global scaled solutions, Uber, in an interview. “One of our company values is ‘great minds don’t think alike’. Onboarding people from various backgrounds with different perspectives is core to how we operate at Uber and these initiatives amplify our focus on that.”

Uber has 1400 full-time tech employees in India. The 800 women techies it plans to hire would work on contract and as in accordance with their flexibility.

Uber said women make up 25 per cent of India's labour force and a large number drop out of work to cater to caregiving responsibilities at home. With limited options to return, most never return to the workforce.

Though diversity and inclusion is the business priority for Uber, the company said it has benefitted by hiring women workforce in terms of improving quality and productivity.

“The KPIs (key performance indicator) and deliverables that we are looking for from this workforce are at par or better than the average staff,” said Yethadka. “We're really seeing the deliverables from them being top-notch. We are also seeing them being highly engaged.”

Yethadka said as hiring increased in the industry last year, most companies witnessed double-digit kind of attrition. “However our attrition related to this workforce (women) was in single digits,” said Yethadka. “We run a satisfaction survey on a  periodic basis and on that they have also scored over 90 per cent for being highly satisfied with the work they are doing and the opportunity they have to develop their careers.”

As part of uReturn, Uber has structured onboarding and buddy program to enable women to embrace their full-time roles. With Pinnacle, the program is exclusively to work from home, with the flexibility to choose working hours. This helps women to divide their time between work and home responsibilities as per convenience.

The firm provides training, job learning sessions and a community to rebuild their skills as they make a comeback to the corporate world. These include single mothers, sole earners for the family, women with primary caregiving responsibilities for the elderly or children and women with disabilities or health challenges.

“These include women who choose to work in the morning for a few hours and then a few hours later in the evening but during the day have to be available for other personal responsibilities,” said Yethadka.

Yethadka leads Global Scaled Solutions, which runs scaled programs for Uber Tech, across mobility, delivery, advanced technologies and freight. This helps in bringing capabilities across operations to help scale up core products globally.

For instance, she runs a multi-functional and multi-location organization spread across India, the US, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Mexico. The team covers capabilities such as localization, engineering services, data analytics, machine learning ops, map editing and risk operations.

Experts said  Uber's programmes aimed to focus on encouraging women in technology are important.

Data from layoffs.fyi, a crowdsourced database of tech layoffs, showed more than 73,000 workers in the US tech sector have been laid off in mass-level job cuts. Over 17,000 tech employees have been laid off in India too.

The number of women entering STEM (Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) related fields is at par with men, according to the experts. However, this gender representation decreases at managerial and higher levels. Women now make up 34 per cent of the IT workforce in India, with a 50:50 gender parity rate in STEM graduates, according to a report by 451 Research. It said the ‘next challenge’ is retaining gender diversity through middle management and leadership roles.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has been named as the highest women employer among 500 most valuable companies, with 210,000 women employees,  according to a Hurun report. However, in spite of this status, women make up only 35 per cent of the workforce of TCS, as per 2022 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500 report.