Never compromise

Entrepreneur Gillian Franklin had a lot on her plate in 2008. She was steering her $70 million revenue cosmetics distribution company Heat Group through the GFC, she was fighting breast cancer and she was helping her three teenage daughters through their final years of schooling.

On top of that she was spending countless hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting sexual discrimination claims and sexual harassment claims from a staff member. She told me the claim seemed to come out of nowhere from a staff member who had been with the company since 2002.

“The staff member was given a performance warning and then post that warning the claim was issued for discrimination. She wanted a significant financial payment. We were all very upset when we got it.”

It would have been very tempting to settle the claim, pay the money and make the whole thing go away. And many entrepreneurs might have felt they were doing their staff a favour by not dragging them through the courts with all the unwelcome publicity that brings. In fact a lot of people advised her to do just that: settle and move on.

But Franklin is a fighter. She also cared passionately about the affect this claim would have on her staff. She knew of a case where the company had paid the go-away money in a similar situation with devastating consequences on the man who was being falsely accused of sexual harassment.

“He never felt he got the chance to have his name cleared. A person never given that opportunity can be impacted in a devastating and lifelong way when there are such serious allegations against them. So I was extremely concerned on the emotional impact on my staff who had false allegations against them.”

And so she fought for three long years to have her name and that of her staff cleared. The case cost her more than $300,000 and in the end 22 days in court. The staff member also changed her legal team several times, resulting in more work for Franklin’s legal team.

“I can’t tell you the time it cost me personally over those three years. The preparation for the court case was very taxing. There were many allegations, 300 pages of allegations, but no proof.”

Franklin did not go into this blindly. “I knew it would be expensive and incredibly time consuming and that it would be upsetting and unsettling going out there but it also reflected the trust I had in my staff,” she says.

Franklin says the barrister had been very specific that they were not to collaborate and discuss evidence.

“That was very hard. I had to sit there and watch the witnesses give evidence not knowing what they were going to stay. But we relied on the truth and that it would win. And it did.”

Franklin says that since being cleared on all counts her staff have been jubilant. “There have been tears and such a sense of relief that it is over. Morale has gone up tenfold,” she says.

And her advice for other entrepreneurs is this: protecting principals can be expensive but they are a precious value. “Never compromise,” she says.