No awards likely for JLL Australia handling of complaints process

JLL chief executive Dan Kernaghan, left, and former head of capital markets Fergal Harris.

Known as one of the “world’s most ethical companies” for the past 18 years, we now learn that global real estate giant JLL is actually in line for yet another award, to be handed out later this year.

We’re talking about the Australian outpost of JLL, led by CEO Dan Kernaghan. His team is a finalist for a diversity and inclusion gong being judged by the Property Council of Australia, a nomination it received for cultivating an environment “where differences are valued, people feel they belong, and authenticity thrives”.

And that’s a crock. Not just because it sounds like a crock – and almost always is a crock – but because it sounds particularly dubious when talking about JLL Australia. Not least for anyone who read our piece on Monday about Kernaghan and his decision, later overruled, to reinstate a star employee who had been subject to a complex and sensitive eight-week investigation into allegations of misconduct.

A female executive had raised a list of concerns about this chap, James Jorgensen, JLL’s Victorian head of logistics and industrial. The allegations were examined and finalised in-house, ending with Kernaghan backing Jorgensen to return to work. We presume that’s because Kernaghan didn’t really think Jorgensen had done much wrong.

That is, until JLL global chief executive Christian Ulbrich and head of HR Laura Adams got wind of the matter, resulting in Kernaghan capriciously flip-flopping on Jorgensen and ordering his termination last Friday. All anyone wants to know now is what happens to Jorgensen’s $2.8m sign-on bonus, and whether he gets to keep it.

Kernaghan could have opted for independent legal counsel to investigate these allegations, but he didn’t.

Instead he leaned on JLL’s in-house HR team, in whose abilities he seems to retain an inordinate level of confidence. We know because he keeps running to it for help whenever someone senior honks on something they shouldn’t (allegedly) or says something rude and humiliating (allegedly) to a colleague.

We’ve learned of a similar story that unfolded two years ago, when JLL’s head of Capital Markets, Fergal Harris, had a complaint levelled about him from a female colleague with far less clout in the business. Harris survived the inquiry that followed (no suggestion he did anything wrong), but he did leave in quiet circumstances some time later, with a sweetener of 12 months’ pay once he was out the door.

Harris’s next move saw him emerge at David Di Pilla’s HMC Capital, according to his LinkedIn account. And by late 2024 he was running the Australian offshoot of US-based Affinius Capital, where he remains, and where our inquiries to him went unanswered on Tuesday.

A JLL spokeswoman said of Harris: “We can confirm that this individual left JLL in early 2023 and we can’t comment further due to confidentiality”, which we took as a reference to questions we asked about the quality of the investigation. And the woman? Gone, too, with a respectable payout. What more would we expect from one of the most ethical companies on the planet, for the past 18 years running?

So it’s all above board at JLL Australia, complaints handled in-house, with discretion, the adults in America none the wiser about what’s happening on this island – until they’re tipped off by furious workers, and Kernaghan is then summoned to the phone for some attitude adjustment, chiropractically administered from the 48th-floor boardroom of a glass tower in Chicago.

Imagine if Kernaghan had just gone for credible, third-party advice in either case. If he had, Ulbrich may have even taken pause before drastically overturning an independent finding, his smackdown of Kernaghan one that JLL’s people, from Hong Kong to Paris, are sure to gossip about for months.

And no, there’s no accolade, even for an ideal so vaunted as diversity, equity and inclusion, that will pull anyone’s attention away from this debacle.