Last week we wrote a polarising post profiling the alleged lien HWL Ebsworth is placing over departing employee salaries pending reimbursement of further education expenses. As one commenter succinctly put it:
I think witholding salaried from staff is the issue … It is like the firm thinks it has a court order or something!!
Well, the plot thickens. We received the following comments from another anonymous HWL Ebsworth spy:
They did the same to me when I left – they stuck their hand out for some uni fees from 18 months before I left. I was expecting it, as the policy was that you had to stay 2 years after the conclusion of your course (so 2.5 years) otherwise the full amount would be repayable. That was the deal and I was happy to keep my end of the deal. I was a little surprised when they put their hand out for the pro-rata value of my practising certificate (because that wasn’t in any policy or letter of offer) but just paid it because I had had a couple of paid days of leave to go to uni and figured it was just easier not to cause a fuss over a hundred dollars or so.
The thing that really got me was that whilst they insisted that I repay the uni fees before I left the firm they told me the couple of hundred dollars worth of reimbursements they owed to me (including urgent company incorporation for a client put on my personal visa card and billed to and paid for by that client before I left) would only be reimbursed in the next pay cycle and after ‘appropriate investigation’. They point blank refused to set the two amounts off (how very big bank like!). That money and money for my unused annual leave entitlements turned up in my bank account some 6 weeks after I left.
An employee is allegedly forced to pay for a company incorporation out their personal bank account, and then required to ensure a 6-week wait for reimbursement after ‘appropriate investigation’. If you’re like us, you might be wondering what else the firm might need in addition to the conclusive proof of incorporation represented by the certificate and receipt presumably proferred. It is worth the paper it is written on, isn’t it?
We also found ourselves questioning whether, in circumstances where the firm allegedly makes staff wait 6 weeks to receive monies owed to them, HWL Ebsworth can deliver timely advice to paying clients. We naturally raised the issue with managing partner Juan Martinez, but he declined to respond to our email (no doubt he was too busy reconciling employee business expenses like taxis claimed from petty cash).
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Whilst I think the delay in expense reimbursement in this case (or in fact staff having to use their own funds for firm purposes at all) is pretty appalling, give it a break with regard to education expense reimbursement.
FS, this is not a scoop – as several people noted on your other thread, the requirement to reimburse study expenses incurred shortly before leaving is standard policy at major firms. Fair enough too, people seem to forget that every dollar that gets spent on staff education is a dollar that can’t be spent on a Christmas party, pay-rises or Grad offers. Why should a firm (staff included) shell out for someone who is going to leave at the first better opportunity.
Most importantly, these people knew what they were signing up for. Get your study paid for, stay the alloted period, or pay it back. Your lucky the firm helped you out in the first place…
FS, given the result HWS received in the roll on Friday firm of the year survey last year (http://www.rollonfriday.com/AussieWeek/AussieFirmoftheYearScores/tabid/338/Default.aspx), I am sure there are far bigger fish to fry at that particular firm.
It’s not the fact that they are asking to be reimbursed, it’s the manner in which that occurs that is the problem. I know for a fact that many firms, depending on certain factors, will let it slide. A very close friend left one of the Big 4 just a few months after completing her CA and there wasn’t a peep to be heard from the partner or firm. She didn’t pay a cent back.
Besides, I think most juniors starting out would definitely consider the firms attitude to sponsored study to be a material consideration when selecting a grad spot. It was for me. Knowing a firm will enforce their (in this case) ‘agreement’ to the letter of the law indicates that they are a firm that sees things in black and white without any real sense of reasonableness. So yes, this is a scoop. Keep up the good work FS.
According to “Inside Info”, Fox Tucker is the Aussie Firm of the Year and DLA Phillip Fox is right at the bottom. Hmmmm.. smells fishy to anyone?
http://www.rollonfriday.com/Default.aspx?TabId=288
I think it also depends on the type of study undertaken: if it’s PLT during grad year, then requiring that be paid back might be a bit rich. But if it’s for an LLM or something else, then it’s probably fair enough – the firm has shelled out for it and legitimately expects some return of service (although in HWL’s case, probably true military-style ROS) from that investment.
As for reimbursing for the practising certificate – my experience has been that’s fairly standard, and the new firm will pick up the tab anyway.
But all that aside – HWL’s conduct still sounds pretty rubbish.
@ Jo Lee
Even more odd is that the following appeared on the RollOnFriday site a couple of weeks before the results of the 2011 survey were published:
“Even less joyful news comes from HWL Ebsworth, which desperately needs some of its happier staff to write in. ‘The firm is rightly regarded as a bunch of grasping, low rent and effete twats.’ Hmmm…”
Yet HWLE don’t even appear in the 2011 survey at all. A sweetly worded missive from ‘The Juan’ possibly?
http://www.rollonfriday.com/AussieWeek/AustralianNews/tabid/336/Id/1034/fromTab/336/Default.aspx
I hope this is the beginning of a FS Clutz-style (justified) demolition of HWLE – it is run like a tin-pot Middle Eastern dictatorship complete with the delusional rhetoric a la Colonel ‘All my people love me’ Gaddafi.
Upper Thigh is on the money with his/her analogy.