Agency Makes Joke Out of Nasty Internal Email
On Friday, an internal email about office cleaning from the President of Toronto-based Henderson Bas was leaked to us and has, as of Saturday afternoon, spawned 57 comments. Most, it seems, from former agency employees. The email, which you can read here along with the comments, reads like a displeased parent blasting her children after returning from a vacation to find the house trashed. Now, everyone has emotions and, at times, everyone says something they wished they hadn't. Perhaps that's the case here or perhaps it is, as the clear majority of commenters claim, a true representation of affairs inside the agency.
Whether a fair representation or not, we have to hand it to Henderson Bas President Dawna Henderson, sender of the email, for her attempt at injecting a bit of humor into the email leak. If you visit the agency's site now, you will be met with the message, "Please Come Back Later. We're Busy Cleaning," a t-shirt offer and a read "As Seen on Adrants" logo. Some have labeled the stunt a lame attempt to brush off what many say is indicative of an agency with some serious internal issues. Others have said Dawna is a great business person and this is just a smart move to show a sense of humor about an email that could have come from any agency head.
On the other hand, we're told the person who leaked the email has been fired. Clearly, there's not a forgiving sense of humor in that move. Based on the comments and emails we received, we're inclined to believe life inside Henderson Bas is pretty intense. In fact, the issue appears to be so hot one person went out a created a CafePress store selling items emblazoned with not so nice statements about the agency.
We, ourselves, have worked in an agency run by a tyrant and have witnessed, first hand, how a dictator-like agency president can, even while guiding the agency to success, turn employees into slump-shouldered yes men who have given up all hope of having an individual thought unless it's exactly what the president said the day before. Of course, we were fired from that shop soon after raising our voice to the man and, to be fair, doing a shitty job because we were too busy getting Adrants and another project off the ground. So, we don't really have the right to complain too much but these occurrences indicate just how much an agency's top dog can effect employees. Some leaders instill the desire to do great things. Others fill you with dread at the thought of spending one more hour inside the agency's doors. Hopefully, throughout your career, you get more of the former and less of the latter. Thankfully, we did.
Comments
Thanks for leaving this up. It's nice to know a lot of people are now able to start to speak the truth about Dawna Henderson.
The fact that she's trying to make a joke out of being such a jerk and humiliating her employees makes her even more insensitive.
It would have been nice for her to put up an apology rather than poking fun at her employees who obviously by leaking the email didn't think it was very funny.
Thanks for leaving this up. It's so important that people have their say. If only the press or even an HR consultant would interview current/former employees they would know what really happens at Henderson BAS. I've heard horror stories and seen other emails from her, it's been imploding in on itself for the past 12 months. Finally this was the straw that broke the camels back.
I have an idea, rather than sending lawyers letters to Ihaveanidea and your former employees for telling the truth, posting "fake" comments on blogs and making a joke out of your unethical behaviour - why don't you start apologizing and showing your people some respect?
How about an apology?
I agree leading by example and not fear is always the best way to do it. If you have a massive turnover of staff year over year, you need to look at 2 things. Whos doing the hiring and whos setting the vision.
If the person leading the charge is not respected among the staff and has no greater vision than raising margins and is answering to the all mighty dollar, creative talent and people who are looking to grow will leave.
As a creative, i look always for 2 things.
#1 vision of the leadership team - they need to take me somewhere new, show me they are going somewhere. I dont ever want to work for an interactive company that wants to model themselves after an ad agency. That model is broken. Maybe thats why HB is having serious issues around hiring and creatives leaving like rats on a burning ship.
#2 inspire me to do great work. - set the pace, set the example. Build up your team, don't tear them down. Dawna's biggest issue is her big mouth - she bad mouths everyone - staff, exstaff, clients, ex clients, competitors etc. What type of leadership does that - she builds herself up to be such a diva. I'd rather work with a down to earth team than with Rockstar Diva Wannabes. Oh and Dawna...if your reading...your not the Queen of Advertising in Toronto and also...Toronto is not the center of the Universe...
Also - if you respect your staff, pay the extra $500.00 a week and bring in someone to clean up after them - why waste money having your entire staff of 40 shut down and cleanup. What a waste. Thats 40 (Staff - HB prob has 60 but some are non-billable) x an average blended rate of 150.00 per hour x 2 hours - thats almost 12,000.00 of potential billable time.
Shit...if i was a staffer with profit share attached to my base salary, i would definitely feel ripped off and disrespected.
SO i guess this just proves that Dawna at HB is not a great people manager and is fiscally irresponsible.
Not much more clearer than that.
Too bad. Its a sad story. Hopefully the staff will find great work somewhere else and continue to grow and do great work. Hopefully Dawna looks back and reflects and changes her stripes. I think she can - she had to be nice at sometime to get this far. Maybe it just finally got to her head.
I hear that Crispin Porter is hiring an interactive team in Miami and Tribal DDB is hot these days in Canada. BBDO Atmosphere NY is amazing, Critical Mass and Fuel Industries in Canada are hiring and doing amazing work with most of their clients on the states side.
The best part is if you actually click through the HB "joke". Nice follow-through guys:
http://www.theniceagency.com/cleanup_buynow.html
With regards to Dawna's racism I can emphatically say that I found many of her comments to be inappropriate and racist. I feel a certain amount of shame for not saying something about it when I had the chance. (That old ad campaign "if your not part of the solution you are part of the problem" wore at me for years). As a former employee I can recount numerous incidents where Dawna made comments inappropriate enough that it would have resulted in her being fired at any fortune 500 company.
Further to the thread above, thanks for allowing this thread to say alive. Clearly there are more than a few people that needed a forum for their voice to be heard. Further to your comments about management style I found this article when I Googled Dawna Henderson “The best advice I ever got: Dawna Henderson Focus on the Three P's: Profit, Product and Paranoia”. Anyone who lists paranoia as positive quality probably should not be a leader.
Keep up the great work - thanks
What happened to all the comments? this is a rant site.. .. Why del the rants?
They didnt tear it down. This is a new rant - checkout the other 89 rants over here about HB
http://www.adrants.com/2006/03/the-nice-agency-isnt-so-nice.php#comments
Dawna molested me as a child.