Double-Downer; Clayton Utz Forces Support Staff to Wear Name-Badges

Apparently unlike the rest of Australia, we took one look at the KFC double-down “burger” and thought:

Clutz Printing, may I take your order?

1. good source of protein;
2. delicious;
3. one quarter of your daily caloric intake in a cheap, fun-sized package.

If you can look past the “blood-vessels-may-burst” factor, which is easy if you are an underpaid junior corporate like the members of the FS editorial team, it seems like a decent deal. Of course, we’re working on the assumption that you’ll receive a fillet of chicken and not a fillet of deep-fried KFC employee, which was an issue recently at the Cranbourne (Vic) KFC when a worker suddenly found himself zinging…

On the topic of companies that mistreat their staff, we received the following comments from a Clayton Utz spy:

I wanted to write to Firm Spy, as I am absolutely appalled by how our Chief Executive Partner and Chief Operations Partner decided that all the shared services employees now have to wear name badges. Mind you it is only half of the shared services employees that received a name badges. As far as I am concerned, this is discrimination, harassment and it also goes against the firms core values (honest, integrity, fair treatment and mutual respect, regardless of your role or position in the way we treat each other and do business). All employees are meant to be treated equally and this can only be seen as a case of the legal staff not wanting to form relationships with shared services staff.

Wow, what a double-downer – the most under-appreciated jobs in the firm and now they have to wear name tags! Presumably legal, non-badge-wearing staff are a bit miffed too – mixing up the print-room with the supermarket check-out. We pressed the Clutz spy for my info and received this response:

I don’t know if it is national … Shared services should mean all non-lawyers, however, they have only targeted catering/reception, facilities, records management, office services and print-room. There is a fair majority of staff in these departments that are refusing to wear them, as they feel the same. If the lawyers want to know who they are talking too – just ask. We make the effort to know them, they should show the same respect. If everyone within the firm (lawyers and non-lawyers) had to wear them, this would not be a problem, as there would be no discrimination.

Yes, there is nothing worse than legal staff not showing respect to non-legal staff. So we sent the following email to Clutz:

—————————- Original Message —————————-
Subject: Name Badges
From:    news@firmspy.com
Date:    Wed, March 23, 2011 9:27 pm
To:      lscott@claytonutz.com
Cc:      dmcdonough@claytonutz.com
rperrett@claytonutz.com
————————————————————————–

Morning Lauren,

Sometimes between fee earners and non-fee earners there can be a bit of an
“us and them mentality”. Often, and very irritatingly, junior lawyers can
talk down to firm stalwarts simply because they aren’t fee earners, be it
at Clayton Utz or any other law firm across Australia.

With this in mind, we were hoping to get a comment from the firm on why a
decision has been made to force shared-services staff to wear name-badges.
We’ve received a bit of a backlash and think it is reasonably well-put;
why create a bigger schism between the legal and non-legal staff than
there already is?

Looking forward to your thoughts as soon as possible. We’ll be publishing
something either tomorrow or early next week.

Regards

FS

The Clutz head of communications, Lauren Scott (who we once spoke with on the phone and cracked it about us never asking the firm for comment pre-publication), declined to respond. Perhaps she was lunching on a double-down in the print room?

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