MI6272 CAREER PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT

Negotiation 1: Employment Equality.

Written by Dr. Jean Cushen

Background

‘PR Gurus’ is a leading Irish public relations firm. It is a non-unionised, medium sized organisation
employing 120 employees. Approximately 40 of these employees are part-time and work on specific
events in their locality. The rest are full-time and work from the Head Office in Dublin City Centre. The
organisation is a partnership made of three managing partners.

Juliet Kazanowska

Juliet has been employed by ‘PR Gurus’ for almost three years. She was initially hired on a part-time, zero
hours contract basis to help run local events in the area she resided at the time, Cork city. After working
part-time on local events for two years the Dublin based event organiser to whom Juliet reported
approached Juliet saying she had always been impressed by Juliet’s performance and suggested that Juliet
apply for a full-time event organiser vacancy that was available in the head office in Dublin. Juliet was
successful in securing this position and she left her family and friends to move to Dublin in order to start
what she saw as being the beginning of a professional career. Juliet holds an honours bachelor’s degree
in marketing and hospitality from the Nicolaus Copernicus University (NCU) located in Torún in her home
country of Poland. NCU is a highly ranked AACSB accredited University.

Juliet has been working in the full-time position of events organiser for six months and her probationary
period is coming to an end. She was called into a review meeting with her manager, John, and when she
arrived one of the managing partners, Stephen was also in attendance. Juliet did not know Stephen all
that well and was surprised to see him at the meeting. At the meeting John led the discussion and said
that many aspects of Juliet’s performance were satisfactory, in particular they appreciated that Juliet had
displayed a willingness to attend and be present at the midweek evening events she was involved in
organising. Juliet often arrived early at such events and stayed late into the night to ensure everything
went according to plan and that the clients were satisfied. However, they said that overall there were
some concerns about Juliet’s performance and consequently her probationary period would be extended
for another six months. The following feedback was given to Juliet.

• Juliet often sought to travel to Cork for the weekend and frequently requested that she not be
allocated to events that were run on weekends. When she was given responsibility to such events
she occassionally swapped with other event organisers.

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 • Juliet’s communication skills were called into question. Event organisers are required to sign off
on a range of event promotion material and materials that were distributed at events. John said
he had reviewed all the materials for the events Juliet had worked on since taking on the role. He
noticed there were some misspellings in some of the materials but so far no clients had
complained. However John and Stephen felt that this was extremely problematic and the lack of
complaints was more a reflection on the clients not noticing, furthermore they claimed it was only
a matter of time before something more serious and embarrassing occurred.
• John told Julia he had sought feedback from some of the part-time staff at events Juliet organised.
Some reported that they found her to be quite abrupt and direct.
• There was also what John called an ‘acclimatisation’ difficulty. John explained that being a
successful event organiser requires an understanding what was ‘cool’ or ‘on trend’ from the
client’s perspective at a particular point in time and ensuring this was reflected in all aspects of
event organising. They acknowledged that this was hard to define but it was about keeping up to
date with best practice in the PR world and tailoring this to clients needs. They felt that Juliet’s
events, from the communications material to food and entertainment, tended to be very
predictable and even ‘stale’. They were lacking the ‘wow’ factor that ‘PR Gurus’ sought to bring
to events and they attributed this to Juliet not looking to John for guidance. They mentioned she
was something of a ‘loose cannon’ doing her own thing.

The meeting ended with Stephen saying that Juliet’s probationary period would be extended for another
six months. They said they recognised that Juliet had many good qualities and they hoped she could
improve. John said he will work closely with her to answer questions and monitor her events during this
time. Furthermore they encouraged her to take an evening course in business English to help her with
her communications.

Juliet’s Perspective
Juliet left the meeting in a state of shock, upset and distress. She did not say much during the meeting as
she was so distraught by the feedback and was actually afraid to speak. She took some time to consider
what was said and decided it was totally and utterly unfair. She felt this was the culmination of six months
of harassment and unequal treatment that John had subjected her to.

Since Juliet took the position, she felt her manager John continuously referenced her Polish nationality.
This had always made Juliet uncomfortable. Initially she thought she might be over-reacting and it was
just John making jokes without realising that they were offensive. After a while she stopped trying to
understand John’s motivations and just tried to ignore him as she felt there was nothing she could do
about it. In fact she avoided John as much as possible and just tried to get on with her own work as she
always felt upset after she spoke with him and he rarely gave her constructive help with her work.
However, now that she John’s attitudes were negatively affecting her career Juliet decided to write down
some examples of John’s treatment of her; these are listed below:

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a) Upon taking the role, Juliet had her first meeting with John. At this meeting he commented that she
was the first non-Irish person on his team and he was looking forward to seeing what great exciting
new insights she could bring to the role that an Irish person couldn’t bring. He queried her
qualification and the quality of the University Juliet attended. John also commented that she was
very lucky to have obtained a full-time post after holding part-time role but he also understood that
‘PR Gurus’ client base was becoming more culturally diverse and she probably got the job to add
something new to the team.
b) John gave Juliet frequent unsolicited advice about the importance of ensuring her events, from the
food to the music, appealed to all and were not too ‘out there’. He told her the music and food
shouldn’t be anything unusual or ‘weird’.
c) John often made comments about how Polish part-timers were much better than Irish part-timers as
they worked far harder. Irish people, he said, had it too easy. He said the hard work of Polish ‘part-
timers’ made them a really ‘attractive’ hire.
d) On one occasion Juliet was having difficulty with the printer and asked John for help as he was nearby.
He fixed the problem and stayed with her until the printing job had finished but during it ‘joked’ that
he wasn’t surprised she was having difficulty given her chromosomes.
e) If Juliet asked a question John would regularly respond asking laughingly why they didn’t teach her
that in her University.
f) He frequently asked her personal questions wanting to know how and why she and her family had
ended up in Ireland, whether she had or was looking for an Irish boyfriend, what her hometown in
Poland was like and what her family and friends worked at, just a lot of personal questions all of the
time. Juliet found his questions exhausting.
g) John was a soccer fan and often made derogatory comments about the global composition of soccer
teams, he claimed the players couldn’t really feel any loyalty to the club.

Juliet was worried that many of the more obviously discriminatory comments, such as comments A to D,
had been made when just the two of them were there and there were no witnesses. Non work related
comments, such as E to G, were occasionally made in general conversation in front of others but no-one
else appeared to react negatively to them. Juliet felt that perhaps they could be interpreted as general
chat and jokes even though she was now sure they were a reflection of a more sinister, discriminatory
and sexist point of view.

Juliet was very upset at being called a ‘loose cannon’. She rarely went to John with questions or ideas as
she did not feel comfortable around him, she felt she was being judged more harshly by John and that if
she brought questions to him he would interpret them as her not being able to do her job. Consequently
Juliet got less guidance than other event organisers and now she was being penalised for this when, in
Juliet’s mind, it was John’s fault as he was completely unapproachable.

Juliet had never mentioned her concerns to anyone inside ‘PR Gurus’ as she did not want to cause trouble
or have people think she could not get along with people. Furthermore John was a very strong personality
who had been with ‘PR Gurus’ for twelve years. He was successful in his job, and appeared to be popular
and on good terms with the three managing partners. Juliet was wary of getting on the wrong side of him
for fear he would turn people against her. Also she was not even sure that if she raised the issue with a

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partner that they would be willing to listen to her as John was more senior and more important to the
organisation. She also did not mention it to her family or friends as they were proud of her for getting
the job and she did not want them to think it was not going well for her.

Juliet was annoyed with herself for not speaking up earlier and for not ensuring that someone else was
aware of the situation. She felt like she needed to raise the issue of John’s behaviour as it was affecting
her career. She sent an email to Stephen, the managing partner who was at the probation review meeting,
stating that she is wholly unsatisfied with the outcome of the review meeting. She sent him the above list
describing John’s behaviours, but requested that John not be informed of the email. She also responded
to the specific concerns raised about her performance during the meeting. Specifically she claimed the
following:

• To Juliet’s knowledge event swapping was common practice in ‘PR Gurus’. No-one else seemed
to have any difficulty with this and she felt she was being unfairly targeted and punished.
• In relation to her communication skills and misspellings, she could only agree that she had made
some mistakes. However she felt these were mere typos that could and did creep into other
peoples’ material. Furthermore, although the final sign off lay with Juliet, there were a number
of other people on event teams who could also have spotted the mistakes. Also she was curious
about whether other staff materials were reviewed by John after events in the same way.
• She was annoyed that part-time staff had been consulted as she felt it totally undermined her
position going forward. Also she felt, from her experience, that it was really important to be clear
and direct in her communications as events are so fast paced that everyone needs to be absolutely
sure what is expected of them and to go ahead and do it. Furthermore she could not see any
difference between how she communicated to part-time staff and how other event organisers
communicated with them, or indeed how she was spoken to when she herself was part-time.
Again she was curious whether other staff had been investigated in the same way.
• She was particularly upset that her events were called predictable when she felt she was only
responding to John’s general advice to keep things mainstream. She claimed she often thought
about doing more ‘interesting’ things but avoided them for fear that some people might not like
them so it was easier to play it safe. She also mentioned that she did not feel comfortable
approaching John to discuss any other ideas she might have. She wondered how she could be
both a ‘loose cannon’ and ‘predictable’ at the same time.

She finishes the email by requesting a meeting with Stephen to discuss concerns. She says that she has
contacted a union and, depending on the outcome of the meeting, she will involve a union representative
in her grievance as she feels her earlier failure to involve a third party has worsened her position and she
doesn’t want to make the same mistake again. Stephen responds immediately calling Juliet to meet with
him one-one, without a 3rd party, with a view to resolving the issue.

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The Managing Partner’s Perspective
Stephen was extremely annoyed when he received Juliet’s email. He has some big sales pitches coming
up and this is the last thing he needs on his plate. Also, Stephen generally has no interest in HR or
employee issues. Stephen’s main skill is in the area of business development and he just wants to deal
with clients and sales and for everyone else to get on with their work. He was also really annoyed with
John. John popped into Stephen’s office about five minutes before Juliet’s review meeting and asked
Stephen to sit in as John thought it would be good to have someone witness the bad news. Stephen has
zero knowledge of Juliet’s performance but did not question John’s version of events as John is a senior
manager and it is his job to know how his team are doing. Stephen is highly irritated this landed on him
and he had the following reaction to Juliet’s claims about her performance problems.

• Event swapping does happen but he felt it is not as common as Juliet makes it out to be, in saying
that he can’t be sure about how often it happens as it is not something people make the managing
partners aware of. Nonetheless it is something the partners are trying to put a stop to as they
need to be able to identify the most suitable event organiser for each event and ensure that
individual stays involved and establishes good client relationships. Plus they are trying to have
‘sector specific’ event organisers and that cannot happen if staff keep swapping.
• Although Juliet’s misspellings didn’t turn out to be too serious he still felt this was extremely
problematic and it should be taken seriously.
• In terms of how Juliet talks to staff, John raised this as a point of concern and Stephen just took
John’s word for it but has no idea how many felt this way or if getting the views of part-time staff
was standard practice. Nonetheless Stephen felt it was really important to maintain good
relations with the part-time staff as ‘PR Gurus’ is so reliant on their flexibility and hard work and
PR Gurus does not want them joining trade unions. In fact Stephen is really annoyed that Juliet
has made contact with a trade union.
• Stephen thought Juliet’s claim that John stopped her from organising more interesting events was
a bit weak. Who knows if Juliet had ever thought of more interesting ways to run events, she may
well just be blaming John for her lack of creativity.

Although Stephen’s initial reaction was that Juliet’s case is weak as she has no witnesses he was very
annoyed with John for putting the organisation in such a vulnerable position. He knows John is a
‘boisterous’ and totally ‘politically incorrect’ character liable to say anything and who claims to ‘tell it like
it is’. However John’s quick wit and constant offering of a ‘viewpoint’ was also worked in his favour
sometimes as many clients enjoyed working with him and he livens up any social event by making jokes
and prompting ‘interesting’ discussions. Stephen accepted that someone could take John’s comments to
be offensive but he was not sure whether the perceived offense was warranted in this case or whether
Juliet was trying to use John’s personality to deflect attention away from the fact that there are problems
with her performance. Stephen had observed John being somewhat rude when out socially but this was
always directed towards people who did not work for PR Gurus. Stephen would not like to think that one
of his managers was acting in an unfair or unequal way and was disrespecting colleagues and the integrity
of the firm as a whole. If John was not managing properly that was a huge problem and, although it was
a problem Stephen would prefer not to have, he wouldn’t shy away from doing the right thing if the

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company had supported Juliet effectively. Stephen is comforted by the fact that the organisation used a
3rd party organisation to deliver on-line anti bullying, anti-harassment and diversity training course. Both
John and Juliet had signed forms to indicate they participated in such training and were aware of the
organisation policy about the importance of and process for raising concerns or grievances.

Next Steps
Juliet and Stephen arrange a time to meet one-one. Neither Juliet nor Stephen are aware of what the
other party wants to get from this meeting and both prepare for something of a battle by familiarising
themselves with the relevant legislation and their options.