Over in Ireland there’s a case before the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) right now that may be of interest to our readers, our readers being people who are all too familiar with stressful and oftentimes toxic Big 4 work environments. It involves the financial services audit leader at Deloitte and a woman with project management experience named Viviana Jakomin who was originally brought on in 2018 on a temporary basis to help his client-facing auditors with their mounds of tedious admin work.
To hear partner Brian Jackson tell it before the WRC, by way of The Irish Times, he was pleased enough with her initial performance that he arranged to make a permanent role for her as financial services audit project coordinator:
Her core tasks were “administrative in nature”, he said. “It’s assisting, monitoring and stuff like that. Clearly, they’re open enough – people can stretch beyond that if they’re performing well,” he said.
He said in discussions with Jakomin, he said it would mean “an opportunity for future promotion opportunities”.
Apparently Jakomin took that to mean a bigger role than what he had in mind at the time:
“Was there a promise made that she would be appointed into a management group level role as project manager?” Harry Wall of business group Ibec, for the employer, asked him.
“At no point whatsoever was there any promise to Viviana that she would be promoted into the management group. That was not even a discussion,” he said.
His intention was to see how the project played out over a full year of annual audit cycles – in particular the big audit season in March 2020. He said he was surprised when Jakomin expressed interest in another job elsewhere in the firm in December 2019. “I felt we were on this year one, let’s make an impact, make this a success,” he said.
The fact she was “looking elsewhere” suggested “some level of dissatisfaction”, he said. “I did not understand that Viviana had a significant concern that she was not part of the management group,” he said.
Fast-forward to February 2020 and, according to Jackson, Jakomin confronted him at the office and started yelling at him to promote her. Literally yelling “promote me,” per his comments.
“Promote me. Promote me now,” he quoted Jakomin as saying.
“I was trying to find my way in: ‘Viviana, we need to talk about this,’” he said.
“No. Promote me now. Promote me now. Promote me now,” came the response, Jackson said.
He replied: “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t promote you now,” and added that he was “happy to support her” to go for more senior posts, he said.
“Viviana kept shouting over me: ‘No, no, no, no, promote me now,’” the partner said. “She was rude, she was emotional, and actually it was a really, really unpleasant conversation. Every single thing I tried to say got shouted over … I couldn’t get a word in,” he said.
Yeah that sounds awkward. Jackson says what he actually told her that day was “Viviana, if you are unwilling to listen to a single word I am going to say, you will never be promoted” but says he’s been “completely and utterly misquoted in so many places” as saying “If you come up against me, you will never be promoted.” Maybe we should start wearing bodycams at the office.
After that, Jakomin remained at Deloitte for another couple years and, according to her LinkedIn, did eventually get to project manager. The highlights of her five years there include:
- Rescued ISQM1 project running two years behind schedule, re-baselined delivery, and successfully closed the stage within six months. Achieved 70% productivity increase by streamlining workflows and optimising resources. [Ed. note: ISQM1 for those who aren’t familiar with International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board standards]
- Established and led the NSE HR Workstream Community across 26 countries, creating shared governance, playbooks, and metrics to drive consistency and collaboration.
- Served as the only Project Manager in the A&A Dept, providing project management expertise across multiple strategic initiatives for BlackRock
- Introduced Agile practices (Kanban, daily stand-up, retrospectives, sprint planning), embedding a culture of continuous improvement and delivering uplift in team productivity.
At the end of 2023 she was out on sick leave and being urged by the firm to come back though she says she felt unsafe in the workplace, the root of the complaint before the workplace commission after an internal workplace grievance didn’t resolve things on her end. A mental health evaluation determined that her mental health was “somewhat strained” but not so bad that she couldn’t return to work while Jakomin describes her mental state as — and this will sound familiar to many of you — “sick at this stage; sick, anxious and desperate” so far worse than what could be reasonably described as “somewhat strained.” So she left and here we are.
The case is still open before the WRC. It’s unclear to us as ignorant Yanks what will even happen with her constructive dismissal case from here, WRC cases have only been public for the last few years. Here’s one of their recent decisions to give you an idea:
In all seriousness, here’s a good outline of other constructive dismissal cases that have gone before the WRC, as explained by actual lawyers in Ireland.
We’ll keep you posted.
