Former Mediacom GM Rob Moore takes agency to court, alleging Willie Pang made him redundant because of mental illness

Not the first of Mediacom’s employees to be made to feel replaceable on disclosure of mental illness. Having worked in the Sydney office I’ve seen (at least) 5 people who have either left through lack of support or they’ve requested a temporary reduction in workload – only to have it stated “it’s the wrong time”, “pitch is on”, “can’t increase head hours on this account” etc. Pang bangs on about a number of industry firsts or things that set Mediacom apart in the market – might be time to look a bit closer to home, especially in an industry that’s synonymous with over working, underpay, under-appreciation and an easily replaceable, transaction based service.

Ok, so here we go on this one…

In the first instance, living with depression is awful and I do not want to trivialize what anyone might be going through here, but…GM is an extremely high pressure role that I don’t think a lot of us couldn’t handle. That pressure and the stress would get to you – the outcome being a state of mind that you could describe as a state of depression.

Regardless of the cause of the condition, whether it was brought on by the job or was pre-existing, it seems like the result is the same. As GM who was unable to fulfill the role requirements (we can have a totally separate debate as to whether the role requirements are unreasonable). The point is the job demanded something that couldn’t be delivered on.

For a lot of low level, non-skilled jobs, it’s true that employers should be held accountable for treating their staff’s mental health conditions with more respect. However this job isn’t like other jobs and shouldn’t be judged in the same way. If Rob was aware of his condition and his inability to manage it, I’d argue there is a responsibility there to “do right” by the people who work under you and rely on you.

When a captain of a ship isn’t able to function properly, he removes himself from his position of authority for the good and safety of his crew. I’d argue the same logic needs to be taken here. If I was a mediacom client I wouldn’t want to hear that things were slipping because the GM wasn’t at the top of their game.

I have nothing but empathy for people with mental struggles however I also wouldn’t work in a high pressure role or expect to be able to stay in a high level position if I had such a condition.

MediaCom’s dirty laundry being aired in public. What could possibly go wrong?

Tip of the Iceberg. Constant downard pressure on client remuneration coupled with the never ending search for greater profit is an industry wide issue. Workloads are having a real negative effect on mental health and I feel for him. The industry as a whole needs to tackle this problem.

Gee, Mediacom certainly do get some messy headlines…

It does concern me a bit that the ex-GM/MD gets the opportunity to chase compensation like this, but what about the countless juniors that cop the same pressure, often passed on from under pressure senior staff members (who are being remunerated hansomly, unlike the poor juniors).

Definitely an industry wide issue. Hopefully the case brings mental health more to the front.

It would seem this is becoming a trend for WPP as a whole. I am aware of [Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy]. The industry needs to start taking mental health more seriously than just putting an RUOK logo on email signatures.

[Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy]

[Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy] Feel sorry for Rob.

Getting a reputation as #1 WPP. Not in a good way. Maybe focus on being a better employer and stop mistreating staff rather than complaining about what people say about you on these sites

Ironic considering [Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy] and realising life ain’t so easy back in media agency side.

Lol, anyone remember this?
https://www.bandt.com.au/media/willie-pang-responds-roy-morgan-fighting-know-much

Back in my day I remember you couldn’t even take a sick day without having to make up for it on the weekends or work from home, good luck ever attempting to take a mental health day off.

I’m glad this is raising awareness about the lack of resources and support for mental health in the industry, the free drinks and breakfast bar isn’t good enough.

Didn’t Willie Pang address his “fight” for better mental health within the media industry in an open letter to Roy Morgan? Perhaps he should have spent more time addressing these issues within his own agency, as a start. If we want improved working conditions and better mental health within our industry, we need leaders who will foster the right environment for this.

No doubt that John Steadman is devastated he wasn’t able to outlaw anonymous comments being posted on industry forums before this story dropped..

The media industries constant downward pressure and lack of consideration for staffs mental well being is leading to anxious, unhappy, over-worked and undervalued employees.

Anyone who has worked under Willie Pang’s leadership after Brett Elliot’s tenure, knows that he keeps the staff and pay lean as possible.

[Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy] .

It says Rob wants to be reinstated, why on earth would you wanna go back mate?

See even if you had removed all identifiers from this I would still have known it was Mediacom. This is an experienced media person who knows how hard agencies work. What does it take for this agency to stop breaking people and to realise that their culture is neither normal nor acceptable?

[Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy] When I worked at MediaCom, crying in the office, working nights and weekends was the norm. Horror stories about people being called into work from funerals, weddings or on leave. All staff events with half the office forced to stay at work. The real victims here are the juniors, who [Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy]

14 comments into the thread, am surprised no one has directly highlighted that MediaCom’s slogan is “People first. Better results.”

Good for you Rob. About time someone stood up to these big bullies. Plenty of that going around.

Sounds like mediacom is run like [Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy]. Horrible reading and hope this is resolved.

Taking care of your talent takes real work not just parties and free lunches.

Perhaps Wpp can zero in on that instead of press releases about eliminating plastic forks in the office or puff about “diversity” and baking rainbow cakes.

Good to see that me leaving MediaCom almost 10 years ago that nothing has changed.

I still remember that had all this money to do office referbs, but no money to pay staff. That huge MediaCom sign really motivated me to walk into the office each morning…

If I could speak to my 22 year old self, I’d say get into real estate and stay away from media agencies.

The same thing happened to me recently at an IPG agency. I was in a mid level role and reached burnout on consistent deadlines and sixty hour weeks with little support. As soon as I showed any weakness or signs of distress to my boss instead of helped I was shown the door. I also considered legal action as the HR meeting was directed with lies and completely made up reasons on why they were letting me go. Absolutely disgusting way to treat people who are already emotionally fragile. The ironic thing was that the agency had recently qualified a load of their senior staff as mental health first aiders, one of which was my boss!

When Rob started at MediaCom , [Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy]

[Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy]

Will efficient media get dragged into this? After all, Willie outsourced MediaComs SEM implementation to them…. [Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy]

The reality is that the more margins are squeezed the leaner companies are run. The leaner they are the more pressure is put on the staff to perform multiple duties above and beyond what is reasonable. Tales of weekend work and long hours have long been told about Media Agencies and people wonder why talent is drained from the industry. It’s just a surprise that people put up with it for so long.

Lets face it, when you are on your deathbed, you are hardly likely to say “I’m glad I worked till midnight every night in order to deliver that client his media plan that they changed 15 times then cut the budget entirely”

For every person that stands up to this type of treatment there are probably 50 who suffer in silence.

Awful for Fonterra, Deakin and Cricket Aust to be brought into this as if they’re bad clients to work on. All are good accounts, run by good people client side.

Who would of thought that undercutting remuneration to win new business, leading to slim structures that put pressure on everyone would lead to burnout and mental health issues amongst staff. Left hand – right hand. Rob Peter to pay Paul. But hey it’s all about the client wins isn’t it, and not the people that actually do the work! Any agency group that spouts they put their people first is just selling another story. This has been going on for years – good on you Rob for speaking out and hope you achieve the outcome you want!

The agency world is going to collapse on itself soon. Every single day, we see articles about how media agencies are ripping their clients off blind, or that media agencies are slow and behind the times, or (and this is actually true), grinding their employees into dust. Why would anyone look at the comms industry and go, you know what I reckon it’d be fun in an agency? I am a seasoned member of the agency world now and I have daily moments of questioning why the f**k the agency ecosystem is the way it is and why no actual hard decisions are being made the change the game. The reality is, change has GOT to come from the TOP – a true top-down commitment to staff before clients, and clients valuing work.

All for more open discussion about the importance of mental health in the workplace. Companies love talking about it, however it’s interesting to note that companies are responsible for putting their employees under more stressful conditions in the first place.
At the same time, take each individuals story with a grain of salt because there are two sides to every story. Especially this one.

Mumbrella, you’re working overtime on the comment censoring today.

People should take a long hard look at the exodus from Dentsu owned agencies after WPP. There is absolute mental turmoil being experienced by relatively young and inexperienced grunt workers all over the shop. It’s tragic to see the mental anguish that people are experiencing at the hands of a disingenuous and uninterested executive level.

Roy Morgan’s Facebook page brought me here but this is no laughing matter….

I used to work at MediaCom too and left due to the lack of work life balance.

That and the fact they fired my boss when she was 8 weeks pregnant.

Will never forget Toby Jenner coming in and giving us this big motivational pitch to the whole team about ‘project fightback’.

My favorite bit was [Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy]

Is it just me that doesn’t have a major issue with this?
I don’t think it should have played out how it did, but if he’s unable to perform in his role due to a medical condition then shouldn’t he have voluntarily taken a leave of absence?

I wonder if Pang took a salary cut as a part of Mediacom’s salary cost reduction program ?

@goodone

As soon as he disclosed his medical condition Mediacom should have sought a
medical clearance from his doctor. It might’ve meant a leave of absence or not.

Since there was a flexible work plan, I
suspect a doctor was involved.

What should NOT have happened whilst
all this was happening was his position
being made redundant.

It is what the shareholders would have wanted. [Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy]

100s of puff-pieces from this organisation annually. Charity fundraisers. Diversity spin. Where is it now? Time to hire that crisis management team and roll out the whiteboard. Long nights ahead for the evil empire to solve this one. I look forward to the clipped, massaged response in a rival online publication singing various people’s praises while they white wash, bleach and take the blood out of the flooring behind the scenes. This is a human business – and talented people are our engine room. Look after them everybody – please. Watch over them, hear them, and take action when they’re not 100%. We talk about leaning in all the time. Lean in when people regardless of rank are feeling like they have few solutions left. You might actually save someone. All the best Rob – you’re better jumping in your X-wing and flying out of there anyway mate. God speed.

When I was diagnosed with a mental health related illness – the WPP agency that I worked for at the time ensured that they applied enough pressure to make me leave.

Before being diagnosed, I’d gone from receiving constant praise and made to feel like I had the potential to rise up through the ranks.

After being advised by my doctor that I needed to rest and recuperate – everything changed. I got hassled on a daily basis on my personal email – some of the messages being of a more threatening nature.

When I returned to work, there were no pleasantries. I was immediately called in to a meeting with my then manager, and had to listen to them run through a list of everything I’d supposedly done wrong in my time there; the majority of which were lies or things that had happened when I was off sick. The ones that I accept were my errors – I felt I’d resolved to a satisfactory manner and we’d all moved on from.

In the same meeting, I was advised that if I planned to take my forthcoming holiday then I’d basically not have a job to come back to. I stupidly didn’t go on that holiday. By the time my boss had called me in for the third one of these “chats” with an ever increasing list, I could take no more. I quit on the spot.

I requested an exit interview with HR, but they didn’t listen to me at all and clearly sided with my managers version of events. I came out of that meeting feeling dejected, but proud that I’d tried to take a stance. I was hoping if I could stop them treating others like that it’d be a win, but it wasn’t, as I know of at least 3 others this person bullied. In my case, it was clear that I was viewed as a problem, and it was easier to get rid of me, as opposed to find actual solutions to support.

It is time that the industry take real actions to address this problem, and have measures/solutions in place. A proper process needs to be implemented and executed, and treated as seriously as any of the other agency documents/contracts. An RUOK day, or these box ticking exercises don’t cut it. We as an industry need to do more, and this very much starts with senior management.

This isn’t new. I started my career in agency over ten years ago, the pressure and bullying was rife, the disregard for anyone having serious personal problems that impacted their mental health was rife. Bullying by senior members of staff was the norm, in fact it was common for multiple directors to band together and bitch about juniors openly on the office floor. There was little understanding even when it was explained that an immediate family member was very ill and dying and that’s why someone wasn’t perhaps performing as they should. I was promoted to an exec and then left the agency after 2.5 years as I couldn’t take the toxic culture anymore. It turned me off media for a long time.

Hi Mumbrella,

Why was this article moved off the front/homepage? There are articles that pre-date the posting of this one that are still showing on HP

The same thing is happening in all agencies – top-down, sustained bullying is rampant with sustained high stress, high pressure, high workloads, reduced hours + reduced staff (often on boring, below pay grade work) causing serious psychological injury – leading to long term damage. And many cases of constructive dismissal – as they are too weak to make redundancies. Maybe this case will expose how destructive and toxic the workaholic, bullying Aussie agency culture is? Especially exploitative for migrants whose visas are tied to their jobs.

Well done Rob. It’s a shame it has to get legal but congrats for fighting the good fight. If it’s any consolation, bullying and abject mistreatment of people is rife in creative agencies too. Such a shame there seem to be so few “decent” leaders and so many sociopaths & narcissists in adland these days.

When I worked at MediaCom, I was actively encouraged to cancel annual leave and booked holidays in the days leading up to it, despite giving 6 months notice or more (and having approval for the time off). I was pressured to work through any sick leave that I took and if I tried to leave the office earlier than 6:30pm at any point, I was told that I didn’t have approval to take a half day.

This occurred across the board – I know a number of people who cancelled holidays and were sick for months at a time because they could not rest. I’m not surprised that Rob faced this pressure.

I wonder what Victorian Government clients WorkSafe and VicHealth would think of this?

replace “depression” or “mental illness” with “cancer” or any other serious physical illness and your bosses would be petrified of pulling this BS…
And this is the issue.. as mental illness is often invisible, even though it can be equally debilitating, Your leaders will not take it seriously and will not until the consequences become real enough that they do.

[Edited for legal reasons].

I’ve been in the media game a long time and honestly, if the current agency model lasts another five years I’ll be shocked. The sooner it implodes the better.

My biggest piece of advice to any comms student considering a career in a media agency is “do anything else”. Clients (yes you have contributed to this disaster) have driven down the price of services to the point where staff are simply cannon fodder. There’s no respect, no quality and no care.

For those mentioning HR, you need to realise the function of HR is to protect the company, not you. And if your boss is a psychopath, get out of there because the new business model of agencies rewards these people precisely because they don’t care about you – caring about you costs money, and these people are usually very good at delivering profits. They’ll be ok and continue to get promoted by CEOs who find them very useful to shield themselves from having to look like the bad guy (or girl). Think about the number of “nice” CEOs with emotional robots for lieutenants. It’s not accidental.

I also call bullshit on all the industry organisations who claim to care about the mental health problems that plague this industry. You don’t. You only care about PR for pretend actions, which makes your boards, full of Agency CEOs and many of the people who create the problems, feel better about themselves and what they’re doing to their staff. You’ve achieved precisely nothing and the problem is only getting worse.

I salute anyone with the balls to get legal on these bastards, all the while knowing this industry will pull ranks and ultimately render them unemployable.

@change is coming – am confused.. are media agencies ripping off clients, or are they buying business on such cheap rates that they have to work staff to the bone to deliver. can’t have it both ways

Lots of things to uncover here.. as per previous poster , Willie outsourced Mediacom melb SEM / digital work to his wife’s company Efficient Media . Wonder if this was properly disclosed to clients ?

i have no opinion on these court proceedings as i don’t know the people involved or the circumstances.

but i do want to give credit to the mumbrella moderation team. it’s obvious that Vivienne & Tim (+probably more people behind the scenes) take this seriously and i’m sure sorting through the comments takes up a lot of time. publishing reader comments and engaging with the audience is a huge differentiator for mumbrella, even in tricky times like this with court cases active and the threat of a gavel banging on your heads due to some errant reader comment.

thankyou!

This goes on at the biggest media agencies in Australia; which means it will happen at the smallest.

I’ve seen a team of people including the HR lead commit so much time and effort to trying to win ‘best place to work’ style awards that they actively ignore constant complaints of internal senior bullying.

Watch out for the agencies that outwardly claim they are tackling mental health / gender bias / diversity in the press every week. This is often just a cover for some deep routed institutionalised bullying. If your CEO is constantly talking about gender / mental health / diversity policies and never talks about the actual work their agency does ask yourself why is that?

I’m sure some agency leaders do both. But if you’re constantly having to tell people that you do all this stuff, start do think about how that energy and effort could be spent actually making the place better and not just to put it in an Award entry.

I’ve also seen an agency submission for best agency culture that had names of countless initiatives which has been made up for the entry alone.

The best places I’ve ever worked don’t commit so much time to to proving it is the best place to work. They just are.