A tawdry tale of how Nine became its own headline

One of the most disappointing aspects to the criticisms levelled at Nine regarding the recently departed head of Channel Nine’s news and current affairs division, Darren Wick, is that his alleged penchant for alcohol and lechery was an open secret among the staff in that area for many years.

Almost no employer can screen for this type of person when they are signing up new staff. But a company with a strong cultural compass and good governance hygiene should become aware of poor behaviour because the staff feel they are safe to report it.

It is frightening that there are now up to a dozen current and former staff (all women I believe) who have come forward with similar stories about feeling unsafe to refer their unfavourable experiences with Wick to the higher-ups.

Investigations into “events” and staff hotlines are helpful but must fall into the category of closing the barn door after the horse has bolted.

For Nine, unfortunately this must be marked a fail.

For many organisations, a lack of intense focus on health and safety is a function of its absence from the list of key performance indicators that make up executive bonuses.

Cover-ups only compound the problem and non-disclosure agreements are at the really tawdry end of the scale.

Even if health and safety does feature in the performance measures for executives, financial measures are almost always more important to the size of an executive’s pay package.

And this brings us to another wicked challenge for companies, one best illustrated by the story of AMP, which promoted one of its senior managers and rainmakers, Boe Pahari, despite a sexual harassment complaint made against him.

This move, which ultimately resulted in the resignation of several board members, was erroneously made because Pahari generated outsized profit for the company.

This appeared to be a clear case of putting profit before safety.

It seems that Darren Wick was also a high performer, and in the minds of the mostly junior staff underneath him, untouchable.

But as with any scandal or misfortune that comes to light, how much damage is sustained by the organisation and its senior leaders comes down to how it was dealt with.

In my experience, (the relatively few) companies that have openly acknowledged and taken action against sexually inappropriate behaviour or bullying have been given credit for their candour.

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At the other end of the spectrum, cover-ups only compound the problem and non-disclosure agreements are at the really tawdry end of the scale. Nine chief executive Mike Sneesby told staff on Monday that he, at least, had not signed any NDAs while assuring all that the company had initiated an external investigation after the first formal complaint was made about Wick.

One of the most internally damaging actions a company can take is to give any alleged harassment perpetrator a big payout – and there are reports, to date not disputed, that Wick walked away with $1 million.

Even if this was his statutory entitlement as a long-serving well-paid manager, it plays poorly to the optics, and even more poorly within the organisation, where there is speculation about editorial job cuts.

And last but never least, how far the damaging tentacles spread can rest with what the board knew of the matter. There are varying reports on what the Nine board did and didn’t know. But any defence that the board wasn’t aware of Wick’s alleged actions and Nine’s response is itself an indictment.

A key manager accused of sexual harassment is an issue that should go before the board – it is a measure of its seriousness. For the board to be addressing this in crisis mode as Nine’s reputation is being attacked from all angles is another case of closing the barn door.

And it can be frightening how a cultural problem can bleed into a financial issue. Advertisers have a keen nose for avoiding any company infecting their own brands.

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