Uber limits work from home to 1% following restructuring

Uber is limiting fully remote work to about one per cent of its workforce, after the ride-hailing company announced plans to eliminate about 3,300 jobs in its biggest workforce reduction since the COVID-19 pandemic.

The firm’s Chief Executive Officer, Dara Khosrowshahi, disclosed the change in a memo sent to employees and published on Uber’s website, seen by PUNCH Online on Wednesday, saying the company would ask most of its existing remote employees to move to an office.

“We are also asking the vast majority of remote employees to move to an office, and going forward, only 1% of employees will be remote,” the executive wrote.

Uber did not disclose how many employees currently work fully remotely, so the memo does not indicate how many workers are being asked to move to an office.

The company will, however, retain its hybrid working policy, which requires employees to work from an office three days a week.

Khosrowshahi declared that the new approach was based on the benefits Uber saw from employees working together physically, particularly in collaboration, problem-solving and the development of early-career employees.

“The benefits of sitting together, collaborating in person, and solving problems as a team are clearer than ever in our post-COVID world,” he stated.

The CEO said Uber was also establishing clearer principles for where roles and teams should be based, with the aim of concentrating employees in a smaller number of key hubs.

Global teams will be concentrated in Uber’s largest global hubs, including New York and San Francisco, while regional teams will be based in designated regional hubs, local teams in country hubs and technology teams in technology hubs.

The company will also prioritise co-location between managers and their teams wherever possible, particularly for employees earlier in their careers.

The layoffs are part of a broader restructuring intended to simplify Uber’s organisation, reduce management layers and eliminate small teams with limited numbers of direct reports.

Khosrowshahi said Uber had grown substantially over the past five years, but the expansion had created additional organisational layers, greater coordination requirements and more fragmented ownership.

The restructuring is expected to reduce Uber’s management ranks by about 20 per cent and cut the number of so-called micro-teams, made up of managers with only one or two direct reports, by about half.

In Nigeria, the company ended its ride-hailing operations in September after about 12 years in the country, with the exit coming as the company faced changes in its local operating environment and competition from other mobility platforms. It ended in Uganda as well.

Uber began operations in Lagos in 2014 and subsequently expanded its services to other Nigerian cities. Its departure leaves Bolt and other ride-hailing platforms to compete for drivers and passengers in a market that has grown significantly since Uber introduced its service.