TBWA Sydney embroiled in legal battle with former employee over bullying and harassment claims
TBWA Sydney is tied up in a legal battle after a former planning director filed documents in the Federal Circuit Court of Australia claiming she was fired for lodging bullying and harassment claims against the ad agency’s Sydney managing director.
TBWA strongly denies the claims, and instead alleges former planning director Annabel Rogers was let go due to serious misconduct.
The former planning director claims to have been fired for exercising her right to report managing director Nitsa Lotus for bullying and harassment.
Rogers alleges Lotus made unfavourable comments about her which “were designed to show that Lotus did not like Rogers”.
In the court documents, Rogers claims TBWA Sydney fired her for exercising her right to report Lotus’ alleged behaviour in the workplace.
In its defence documents, TBWA instead argues Rogers was dismissed July last year for serious misconduct.
Rogers says she initially tendered her resignation in May 2016 as a result of Lotus’ alleged bullying and harassment, and informed TBWA AUNZ CEO Paul Bradbury of the agency’s alleged reluctance to address the bullying and harassment complaint against Lotus.
The planning director then withdrew her resignation less than a month later, after mediation and an apology from Lotus, according to her statement.
According to the court documents filed by Rogers, Lotus allegedly said at the time: “I have a problem with strong women and for me to grow as a leader I need to work on that. I am sorry you felt the way you did and I want to continue to lead this business and I will work on it.”
After Rogers withdrew her resignation, TBWA awarded the senior planner a $40,000 pay rise that increased her salary to $190,000, the ad agency says.
TBWA claims the pay rise was to counter-offer another job she had been given at Saatchi & Saatchi.
The dispute flared up again in July the following year, when Rogers allegedly discovered a handover document prepared by Lotus for incoming chief strategy officer Matt Springate, which allegedly described Rogers as “easily distracted and difficult to get her engaged in meetings”.
Following Rogers’ discovery of the document, the situation escalated to involve TBWA’s CEO Bradbury who, Rogers alleged, warned her in a meeting on 19 July 2017 that taking action against Lotus would be “bad for your reputation” and “bad for her”.
In her statement of claim, Rogers further alleged that during the meeting Bradbury asked her: “What number would she need to stop this issue going to court?”
TBWA denies the allegation in its filed defence.
During the meeting, Rogers claims Bradbury asked her to apologise to Springate for allegedly copying the confidential handover document.
TBWA claims the document, which “contained sensitive information about members of the planning team”, was obtained from Springate’s office on a Saturday. TBWA alleges Rogers claimed to have found the document on a printer.
The following day, TBWA’s head of people and culture, Cassie Sellars, allegedly advised Rogers she was launching an investigation into the ongoing bullying complaints against Lotus. Rogers also claims that on July 26 she was advised that an independent investigator had been appointed to formally examine her complaints.
Rogers was dismissed later that day.
In its defence, the Omnicom-owned agency accused the former employee of sneaking into an office to find and take photos of the only copy of the “confidential” handover document.
According to the creative agency, Rogers then shared parts of the document with other agency employees telling them she found the handover on a printer, TBWA alleged.
TBWA Sydney – whose clients include Amazon, Macquarie University, PepsiCo, Gatorade and M.J.Bale – argued Rogers’ employment was terminated for matters of misconduct relating to obtaining, sharing and taking photos of a confidential handover document shared between Lotus and chief strategy officer, Springate.
In TBWA’s defence, the firm argued Rogers “located” and “took photos” of the one copy of the “confidential” handover document, which contained “sensitive information about members of the planning team” including their salary, employment history, key skills, strengths and areas of growth, which was was printed and put on Springate’s desk.
TBWA claims the decision to terminate Rogers’ employment was made on July 22 “as a result of the very serious matters regarding [Rogers’] conduct”.
Rogers declined Mumbrella’s request for comment.
TBWA’s CEO, Paul Bradbury, added: “As this matter is before the courts we won’t be commenting, only to say we will be defending our position vigorously.”
It will be interesting to see how this case goes. If this is an actual case of bullying, I look forward to hearing the outcome and repercussions. It may well open the can of worms that needs to be opened on some CEOs behaviour, that I’ve personally experienced. That said, some people feel genuine performance management is a form of bullying which it isn’t.
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I am definitely interested to see how this case turns out. I myself have been a victim of bullying and harassment in agency land, from a well known Sydney agency. I never took it further, as I was too scared to go up against this agency. I do agree with the above comment however – performance management isn’t a form of bullying.
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‘Confidential’ info left on a printer. Oh dear. Sounds pretty thin.
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Funny how a woman’s working style in an environment where she is (allegedly) being bullied is considered ‘misconduct’. Often the ‘victim’ comes across as the bad guy. I hope this gets fairly tried. I’m not able to say what is right or wrong here but do know the potential here for an unfair outcome. The potential here is that the business with power and resources will make a claim difficult to prove and find a way to turn this on the victim. I hope the right thing gets done here.
I hope others look beyond the immediate behaviour of someone experiencing trauma and accept their behaviour is the result of something deeper a lot of the time. There are professional services that consult on this type of thing and could have been called in before it turned to litigation. Ad agencies need to grow up and work like grown up corporates do and seek training, conflict resolution services, workplace psychologists or Root Cause Analysis specialists. Oh and how about bullies learn how not to be?! Would save everyone a lot of heartache and costs.
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I know someone who was relentlessly bullied out of their role by an incoming agency CEO. Years of loyal service and success discarded because the new CEO wanted their captain’s pick.
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The Australian legal system is stacked against the employee who has been bullied or treated badly. It’s brilliant to see someone take a stand against bullying when so many haven’t been able to afford to or have been told it’s a fight they can’t win. I wonder if this will open the gates to a lot of other very serious cases of bullying in the Australian ad industry? I hope it does as there are too many in positions of power that shouldn’t be.
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Seems timely off the back of the B&T women in media awards.
Hopefully one day they will celebrate not just the great successes of women in media but also women being kind and supportive to juniors and not “having problems with strong women” or alleged bullying and harassment.
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To the poster who said they knew of an incoming CEO doing this. I know of the same. They have a history of using below the belt techniques to either make themselves look better or others look bad. This has, at times, meant that the standard of work for the client has suffered. Some clients have been known to be used as a chess piece where the aforementioned CEO has deliberately allowed issues to happen so they can either save the day or put the blame at someone else’s feet. It’s like a firefighter starting their own fires. Now imagine if this same firefighter is then awarded a prize for bravery? (Think about that when CEO’s tend to dominate awards that an agency gets)
I do think HR departments have a greater responsibility to stop this happening. Often an employee is greeted with a shrug of the shoulders as the HR specialist isn’t going to endanger their own relationship with a CEO or MD which is also built upon a position of fear and abuse. They all too often, won’t bite the had that feeds them, despite an admittance of the bullying behaviour and a long list of complaints . This has to stop and if people are going to give out awards for rescuing people out of a burning house – maybe check they didn’t set the house on fire themselves.
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Before jumping in with the observation that a woman (Ms Rogers) here is alleging bullying and drawing conclusions based upon gender, it’s worth noting that Nitsa Lotus is also a woman. (This is not made explicit in the article.) Hence, it might as easily be portrayed as a case of someone not being able to cope with being managed by a female rather than male. Probably best to wait for the outcome on this one.
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Just because a woman is in a powerful position does not mean it’s always good for women in that workpkace. Many of them in the ad game conform to the worst of male ways. This is looking like one of those cases. Something in the water in Pyrmont.
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I don’t think anyone is doing this. Certainly not in the comments. Look at One Day’s comments for example. I think everyone knows this is a woman being accused of bullying. This is about (alleged) bullying. Not gender.
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At one agency I worked at, the HR head happily would enter most culture awards but was afraid to confront the CEO over their aggressive behaviour and bullying. Always felt it was unusual that internally behaviours remained completely unchallenged through the fear the person had of being let go themselves, however for the outside world the awards would be heavily promoted as a signal of the ‘inclusive’ nature of the business.
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of course it isn’t about gender..because it’s about alleged female on female crimes. if it was male on female or female on male allegations, I’m certain there would be triple the number of comments on here by now and the vast majority would be making gender based comments
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“I have a problem with strong women.” What the actual F.
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Funny, I read two of the above comments as doing just that. Perhaps it’s just my interpretation.
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I hear you brother
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Naked ambition meets satisfied intelligence.
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I think we know the same CEO!
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But what happens when your satellite office has no local HR presence?
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190k salary for a planning director.
You lot are getting paid way too much in ad-land for what you actually deliver.
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We certainly do
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Me also!
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Yep know that one.
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Could name a few women at a few agencies in senior leadership roles whose sole purpose is to crush young, upcoming female talent. Hell, not even upcoming. Just female talent- anyone that carries a perceived threat to their fragile ego.
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Is it time to name and shame?
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Interesting how much info has been leaked about this case.
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In what way?
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That’s all you have to say? You read about a case of a human being bullied, and you then label them as overpaid. That’s it?! Callous, and uncalled for. Maybe next time you feel the need to comment on an article, especially about bullying, you pause for a few minutes and either don’t write anything, or practice kindness, rather than perpetuating the bullying.
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I know Nitsa. I’ve worked with her on and off over the past 15 years. She is someone i see as kind, good and fair. And believe me, i have seen a lot of people on the other side of that equation so I know how to call it . I am wondering if this is just a personality clash? From the subtext they are both strong willed. I don’t know Annabel. She in all likelihoods is a good person too. Sometimes people don’t mix, agency cultures are the wrong fit. Annabel did the right things – brought her concerns to HR, and also looked around and was offered another job. The smart move would have been to take the job at Saatchi’s. Move on and upwards. I have never used a new job offer as a way to trade up. It doesn’t work. It’s like threatening divorce. Things might go on, but cracks begin to form…
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I used to work at TBWA – with Nitsa, and I agree with the comment above about her being kind, good and fair. This story makes me feel incredibly sad because legal action is a stressful, traumatic situation for anyone to have to go through, let alone for it to be reported in the media. This will end up being a drawn-out staring contest that will drag on until someone agrees to end it with a big, fat cheque. And at the end of it all, no-one will be right or wrong. So who really wins? The lawyers?
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