Slater & Gordon short-changing staff: A crisis a decade in the making

It’s frankly not a good look.
Picture this: you are one of Australia’s leading trade union and labour movement law firms.
You bill yourself as having ‘a proud history of partnering with trade unions to defend workers’ rights’.
And to top it off, this has been a crisis that has been more than a decade in the making.
This is very much now the reality of prominent class action law firm Slater & Gordon who have copped to short-changing over 100 of their own staff by at least $300,000 for over a decade, all due to not correctly calculating leave entitlements.
Oh, and the clincher?
Things came to a head last year when Slater & Gordon’s payroll manager was training a new staff member.
So many thoughts come to mind.
Their chief executive Dina Tutungi said it best when she said that there were “no excuses” for the short-changing.
And she’s absolutely right.
Not only that, in today’s day and age, a crisis can strike an organisation at any time.
It can take years to build up a brand, only for it to be destroyed in minutes.
There are a few golden rules when it comes to crisis management.
These include taking responsibility, being human, and where possible, getting ahead of the story.
Now, let’s take a closer look at Slater & Gordon shall we.
It’s been a mixed bag for them. Yes, they took responsibility and notified the affected staff.
They engaged an external firm to conduct a third-party investigation, which will be followed by them repaying affected workers.
However, the clincher in this case is that this was an issue that was bubbling away for years. So, it begs the question – what processes does a company have in place? What checks and balances do you have to ensure the bare minimum is being done?
In this instance, that staff are being paid correctly for the work that they had completed.
When it comes to a crisis – you have to put your money where your mouth is. Always.
Today, organisations must have a crisis plan in place. You simply can’t afford not to. The risk for an organisation and its reputation brand is just too great.
Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help, BEFORE a crisis strikes your organisation!