His announcement came as a report to change the company were released by Eric H. Holder Jr., a former attorney general, and his law firm.
SAN FRANCISCO — Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, said he would take a leave of absence from the ride-hailing service after an investigation into the company concluded that Uber must repudiate its aggressive start-up culture.
The developments were part of a flurry of actions at Uber on Tuesday morning, which began with an internal email from Mr. Kalanick right before a staff meeting got underway. In the email to employees, Mr. Kalanick said he would take a leave of absence to work on himself and reflect on building a “world class leadership team” for the company. He did not specify how long he would be away.
Minutes later, Uber released 13 pages of recommendations to change the company, which were the result of an investigation into its culture conducted by the former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. and his law firm, Covington & Burling.
The recommendations included limiting Mr. Kalanick’s responsibilities by reallocating some of his duties, with an increased emphasis on a chief operating officer at the company. Uber also should appoint an independent chairman and create an oversight committee on the board, in an effort to bolster the checks and balances on management, according to the recommendations.
The proposed changes amounted to a rejection of the methods and culture that Uber has used to build itself into a nearly $70 billion company that has upended the transportation status quo worldwide. Under Mr. Kalanick, Uber flouted rules and regulations to bring its ride-summoning service to hundreds of cities, prized growth above all else, and often turned a blind eye to corporate misbehavior.
That ballooned into a crisis starting in February, when a former employee wrote a blog post detailing what she said was a history of sexual harassment and lack of response from management at the company. The post set off a deluge of complaints from staff about Uber’s culture, exposing a toxic environment.
Uber has since moved to clean up the situation. It has fired 20 employees in the last few months for transgressions including sexual harassment. Emil Michael, a top lieutenant of Mr. Kalanick’s, left the company this week. And many other executives have departed, leaving something of a leadership void at the company.
On Sunday, Uber’s board met for nearly seven hours at Covington & Burling’s office in Los Angeles. Afterward, the board said it had unanimously voted to adopt all the recommendations in Mr. Holder’s report.
“Implementing these recommendations will improve our culture, promote fairness and accountability, and establish processes and systems to ensure the mistakes of the past will not be repeated, ” Liane Hornsey, Uber’s chief of human resources, said in a statement . “While change does not happen overnight, we’ re committed to rebuilding trust with our employees, riders and drivers.”
Mr. Kalanick’s leave of absence was largely left to the chief executive to decide himself, people with knowledge of the situation have said. He has been under pressure for his aggressive management style, and had acknowledged he needed leadership help after a video of him berating an Uber driver became public. Mr. Kalanick, 40, is also grappling with a boating accident last month that left his mother dead and his father in the hospital.
“The ultimate responsibility, for where we’ ve gotten and how we’ ve gotten here rests on my shoulders, ” Mr. Kalanick wrote in the email to employees. “There is of course much to be proud of but there is much to improve.”
The recommendations to change Uber’s culture from Mr. Holder and Covington & Burling consisted of 10 main categories aimed at creating checks and balances on Uber’s senior management, enhancing the board’s oversight and revamping the company’s internal controls.
Many of the recommendations involve putting in processes to professionalize the way that Uber is run. They included performance reviews of senior leadership to hold executives accountable, better record-keeping in human resources, reformulating the company’s cultural values, mandatory manager and human resources training, and an emphasis on diversity and inclusion.
“We recommend that Uber focus on four prevailing themes with regard to taking the following remedial measures: tone at the top, trust, transformation, and accountability, ” the report said.
Uber presented the recommendations to employees at its regular Tuesday staff meeting at its headquarters, which attendees described as packed. A special subcommittee of Uber’s board took the stage, including Arianna Huffington, David Bonderman and J. William Gurley, with each addressing the crowd and highlighting different deficiencies discussed in the report, along with how the company would have to overcome the problems. Mr. Kalanick did not attend.
The difficulties of changing Uber’s culture were captured during the meeting, when Mr. Bonderman told Ms. Huffington that adding more women to the company’s board would result in “more talking.” The remark left people aghast, according to attendees.
Mr. Bonderman later apologized to Ms. Huffington and Uber’s employees in an email after the meeting. “It was inappropriate, ” he said. “I deeply regret it.”
