Is Jayne Hrdlicka a bully? The evidence is thin
Corporate life in Australia suggests some still don’t feel comfortable with a firm woman in charge.
As recently as four years ago, Jayne Hrdlicka was the up and coming chief executive that everyone wanted to work with.
Then, as quickly as she seemed to rise in the public eye, she fell.
A failed experience at the helm of A2 Milk followed by a controversial catapulting to the top job at Virgin Australia as it came out of administration saw the diminutive US-born businesswoman become the frequent target of workplace scorn.
Hrdlicka is certainly not one to play the female card. She puts the bad press and allegations of bullying down to the reality of her most recent role. “Some people just don’t like change,” she surmises.
But corporate experience in Australia tells us there is another summation at play – some people just don’t feel comfortable with a suffer-no-fools woman in charge.
Hrdlicka’s success in turning Virgin’s finances around cannot be disputed. The airline has gone from collapsed to independently profitable for the first time.
Instead of an uncertain future, the airline is now hiring staff, eyeing an ASX listing and believes its domestic operation is “at least” as profitable as larger rival Qantas.
Hrdlicka’s many detractors say that the airline’s popular and highly-regarded boss at the time of its collapse, Paul Scurrah, could have also turned this business around if given the time.
They may be right. Scurrah was only in the job for 18 months before Virgin collapsed and was frantically stripping out costs and simplifying processes before the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
The fact that Virgin’s new owner Bain Capital promised they’d support Scurrah, then showed him the door once the biggest creditor group – staff – approved the takeover, confirmed Hrdlicka as the interloper.
It was a brutal bait and switch by Bain. But then, who ever thinks private equity are the nice guys in the room? And regardless, that pain belongs with Bain, not Jayne.
What Hrdlicka did next
Since taking the reins at Virgin, Hrdlicka has overhauled much of the business and made new enemies – on top of several outspoken ones at A2 – along the way.
With virtually no planes in the sky during the lockdowns, Virgin reorganised. About 3,000 people lost jobs and others left, unhappy with the take-down of Scurrah.
What Hrdlicka didn’t do is also significant. Whether by accident or design, Virgin didn’t follow Qantas in outsourcing baggage handling and the airline retained its onshore customer service.
This move appears to have paid off. When passenger numbers shot up from near zero over Easter, Virgin seemed to manage the explosion in demand better than Qantas on most measures.
As queues of people snaked outside major airports to clear security, Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce added fuel to the fire by declaring them “not match fit.”
Virgin – without the complexity of running an international airline – was able to quietly deal with its queues of frustrated travellers.
By changing processes and tweaking the way it does business, Virgin has cut an extra $300m from costs post administration and has been able to hire (or rehire) some 1,500 staff.
If it’s all such positive news, it begs the question of why do so many people seem to hate her?
Bullying accusations
“She’s a bully” and “Virgin has a major culture problem.”
That’s a common response to Jayne Hrdlicka. Backing up such accusations is more difficult.
Clearly her former team at Bain liked her – otherwise they would not have put her in the top job at Virgin. People that worked with Hrdlicka at Jetstar seem largely to regard her highly.
Joyce himself, responsible for hiring his now rival, has until recently been very clear about his respect for Hrdlicka.
The two are believed to have fallen out only very recently, and only over the poaching of each others’ employees.
At Tennis Australia, where Hrdlicka has been chair for six years, sources both on and off the record speak extremely highly of the Texas-born executive.
“It’s been an extremely stressful couple of years at Tennis Australia given the challenges on the Australian Open during Covid and Jayne has displayed extraordinary leadership,” says Graham Bradley, who sits on the board of Tennis Australia and on the board of Virgin Australia International Holdings. “She has kept an even keel with no panic.”
Her commitment and work ethic at Tennis Australia is also reflective of what he sees of her at Virgin. “Jayne has a direct communications style, which I think is admirable. I’ve seen absolutely nothing that would remotely be described as bullying.”
At A2, where the bad reputation suddenly burst forth, the only off-the-record comments are mostly of intense dislike.
The reasons though, are somewhat strange. They ranging from “she didn’t come to the Christmas Party” to “she didn’t stand up when I met her for coffee,” and “she hired too many people.”
Another issue in dispute is whether Hrdlicka received approval from the A2 board before bringing in her former employer – Bain – to do management consulting work at the company.
Turbulent takeoff at Virgin
At Virgin, she certainly landed with a thud – the unwanted interloper among exhausted staff who had backed Scurrah.
Still, there has been a relatively low level of staff turnover and just one formal complaint against Hrdlicka herself. That one, by former chief pilot Michael Fitzgerald, alleges he was bullied and harassed by the chief executive.
Another flight attendant has claimed she was unfairly dismissed. And while not on Hrdlicka, the former chief corporate affairs officer also left over claims she had bullied underlings.
Taking a company out of administration is rarely likely to make you friends among staff.
Despite this, turnover last year was 8.5 per cent and among senior executives the figure was under 4 per cent. That compares with 9.5 per cent of Australians changing jobs last year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
A 2021 pulse check done late last year found the number of people who would recommend Virgin to family and friends as a place to work had dropped 4 per cent from pre-administration levels, to 61 per cent. There are claims from Virgin’s detractors that the airline is only keeping staff because it’s paying them large amounts in share options. This is hard to verify one way or another.
Virgin’s most recent financial filings with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission shows the company has issued 52.4m shares with a nominal value of $1 each, linked to performance hurdles. Hrdlicka will have been issued the largest portion of these shares with the rest divvied up among the 48 people in her leadership team.
A smart ‘prickly pear’
Two things Hrdlicka’s enemies and friends alike would agree on is that she is often the smartest person in the room, and that she seems to lack EQ.
Her fans – and it’s worth noting there are also plenty of those – say she doesn’t suffer fools gladly, she works hard and expects the same from others, and that she can come across as a “bit of a prickly pear.”
She may not always read the room either. A recent Virgin competition where first prize was lunch with her didn’t sit well.
While Hrdlicka seems to have the absolute support of Bain, the airline’s largest shareholder, the view of Sir Richard Branson – who now holds only 5 per cent of the airline – is less clear.
He certainly reads the headlines and the one about winning lunch with her “made him cringe” according to one well-placed source, who says even though he respects Hrdlicka, the lunch prize “really didn’t pass the pub test”.
Over at Tennis Australia, another source privately points out that this kind of perceived miss-step probably wouldn’t even hit the press if Hrdlicka was a man.
“Women in leadership take more criticism. They are much more under the microscope than men,” he adds.
Whatever the reason is that the bringing down of Hrdlicka began, bad press said often enough sometimes becomes truth.
Even if it isn’t.
