JLL Australia CEO Dan Kernaghan sat on his hands over foul WhatsApp messages
Friday morning carried on just like any other at the offices of JLL Australia, despite the revelations that day, published in this column, that two of its national executives, Peter Blade and Greg Pike, had allegedly used some very filthy, very inappropriate language on a WhatsApp group chat.
Blade and Pike were on a flight to Perth when they allegedly boasted of hitting up a strip club and “nutting off” on a stripper’s back. In the same conversation, Pike allegedly threatened to “nut” in the handbag of a female colleague when she tried pulling up their sexual language.
Many organisations, big and small, would whirr into action at the surfacing of such foul behaviour, if only to fend off any risk to the brand, or the degradation of employee morale, or the possibility of severe legal consequences and breaches of the Sex Discrimination Act.
But at JLL, voted one of “the most ethical companies on the planet” for the past 18 years running, the order of the day was simple: do absolutely nothing. And they did it well.
What’s astounding in this instance is that JLL’s CEO, Dan Kernaghan, already knew about the WhatsApp discussion. It was brought to his attention in 2022 by two senior JLL men, no longer with the company, who were aghast at the behaviour exhibited by Blade and Pike.
“What would you have me do?” Kernaghan allegedly said at this meeting, the details of which are contained in a confidential complaint filed with JLL’s global head of HR, Laura Adams, and its CEO, Christian Ulbrich.
“If I act on this, the whole business will come out.”
And that’s basically the JLL Australia story in a tidy little nutshell. Kernaghan may as well have just said, “I’d do what’s right but it’ll completely f..k the quarterly figures”.
If Ulbrich could pull his head out of choosing a chalet at Davos next year, or appearing on American television, for just a minute, he might actually wake up to the realisation that Kernaghan is a CEO phonily professing to be a champion for women, who says it all the time and sits on the right boards and affects a personality of really caring about underrepresentation. But in reality, he’s all-but managed a protection racket for misogyny at JLL.
Kernaghan may have actually helped along that impression last Wednesday when he insisted upon on the reinstatement of James Jorgensen, a hotshot leader within JLL’s Victorian industrial team. Jorgensen had been accused of serious misconduct allegations by a female colleague, and these were substantiated, the allegations, Kernaghan told the woman himself, and yet to everyone’s shock and amazement, Kernaghan still elected to reinstate Jorgensen. Some employees were even outraged enough to write to Ulbrich and Adams directly seeking their help.
It worked, too. Jorgensen’s termination came two days afterwards, but only after Ulbrich overrode his Australian CEO and made a mockery of his decision-making.
Kernaghan’s probably not a sinister guy, but, perhaps unwittingly, he’s spent years paving a speedway for oafs like Blade and Pike, and others, to spin their wheels and carry on like goons around women.
This will happen when every signal these people receive is one in which their behaviour may stink but they have an impression they’re too valuable to lose.
Blade remains at the centre of yet another allegation, one of misconduct against a female employee, according to the same complaint filed with global management (there’s no suggestion the allegation is true, only that it’s been made; neither Blade nor the company responded to inquiries about it on Friday). Doesn’t matter. He turned up to work as usual on Friday, as did Pike, who spent the day responding to emails and patting his team on the back for a big week of industrial sales. Zero consequence, no investigation.
And the woman who had to endure Pike’s alleged threat to “nut” in her handbag? She still works at JLL, in the same division. And of course she didn’t make a big deal about what happened at the time, when she was asked if it bothered her. No woman wants to risk their career making a big deal about their boss’s sleazy, foul remarks, or any gross advances and invasions of personal space. Real champions of women know that. Kernaghan, evidently, knows nothing about it.
