BrewDog has rejected a proposal from Hand & Heart, the workplace consulting firm that was attempting to manage a reconciliation program between the Scottish craft brewer and current and former employees who felt wronged by its allegedly toxic work environment.
“There is no discussion to return to,” Hand & Heart managing director Kate Bailey wrote to BrewDog after receiving a letter from the brewery she said accused her of “misleading platform participants, encouraging malicious intent, coercion [and] breach of guidelines.”
BrewDog chairman Allan Leighton sent Bailey a letter, which Brewbound has obtained, informing her that the company did not want to proceed with her proposal.
“After careful consideration, we will not be engaging Hand & Heart to oversee the proposed programme,” he wrote. “We have several concerns over your proposal that lead us to conclude the process would neither be fair, transparent nor indeed one that is in the interests of BrewDog and its people.”
Communication between the parties became strained last week when Bailey announced that “a different representative from BrewDog sought information as an individual,” which Bailey said “contradicted the ‘good faith’ discussions and the intentions the company expressed.”
The General Data Protection Law permits individuals to seek information about how their personal data is stored and used by companies, and such a request in this case could result in the unveiling of confidential information, Good Beer Hunting reported last week.
In a post over the weekend on BrewDog’s Equity For Punks (EFP) Forum, the online community for investors in its crowdfunding platform, the body of which was shared with Brewound, the company said Bailey’s announcement of the request “disappointed” the company.
“These discussions were conducted in good faith, and on a confidential basis at all times,” BrewDog wrote. “So we were disappointed to discover Ms. Bailey had issued a statement on her website which gave a false description of a GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] request that had been made.
“We would like to make it very clear, the material requested from Hand & Heart, in line with its GDPR obligations, can be redacted to keep confidential the identity of those people that have contributed to the platform,” the company continued. “In other words, we have no intention of identifying any of the participants on the platform.”
The background: Bailey created the platform in February for affected BrewDog workers to submit their experiences and indicate interest in participating in a formal reconciliation program with the embattled brewer. She pioneered a similar program between Danish beer maker Mikkeller and former workers. In the case of BrewDog, the platform’s creation followed a BBC documentary that detailed allegations of inappropriate behavior by CEO James Watt toward female staff, among other claims of workplace toxicity.
Since then, Watt has denounced the documentary and described himself as the target of a “coordinated criminal campaign of online harassment, defamation, blackmail, significant fraud, and malicious communications.” In the same LinkedIn post, Watt admitted he “engaged the services of digital investigative specialists” following a report in the Guardian that he had hired private investigators to gather information on former employees and associates.
Watt said criminal and civil proceedings are underway against perpetrators identified by the research. However, Bailey noted on March 15 and confirmed today to Brewbound that no legal complaints have been filed against platform participants or founders of Punks With Purpose, a group of former BrewDog employees who called out the company’s toxic culture in a June 2021 open letter.
The latest developments: Last week, BrewDog chairman Allan Leighton accused Bailey of “amplifying” criticism of the company in a letter reviewed by The Daily Mail – ostensibly the same letter Bailey penned a response to on Hand & Heart’s website. Leighton objected to the estimated £100,000 fee for the reconciliation program, which would include the services of “up to six independent legal counsel, at least four external investigators, rehabilitation specialists, practitioners and yes – and a fee for H&H for coordinating the independent program,” Bailey wrote in a rebuttal on April 2.
“The unavoidable impression is that of H&H charging the company to extinguish a fire it is fuelling itself,” Leighton wrote.
In the letter, Leighton alleged that Hand & Heart is “encouraging participants to submit malicious content to the platform.” However, Bailey said the platform has received “countless abuses” allegedly from EFP members and BrewDog supporters. A few weeks ago, someone made a submission to the platform that read “hope you get raped,’’ Bailey wrote.
In a video recorded over the weekend, Bailey said she had been subjected to “perhaps a coordinated strategy” to discredit her and the affected workers platform, which she said “remains my No. 1 priority.”
“My overall intention is to continue on with the platform systematically as outlined from the beginning, and actually go back to my clients, who I love, and go back to the work that I love doing as a workplace consultant,” she said.
Bailey highlighted a key difference between the reconciliation program Hand & Heart is facilitating between affected workers and Mikkeller – which sought her input after she produced “Super Cool Toxic Workplace,” a podcast about working conditions at Mikkeller’s locations in Europe and the U.S. – and the one that was attempted for BrewDog.
“Mikkeller entered the process believing the stories and requiring limited investigation,” she wrote.
While no formal agreement had been reached, Bailey met with BrewDog executives about the proposed program, and came away from her interactions with them worried that they were confused about the nature of the program.
“I was gravely concerned they did not understand I was there to deliver a reconciliation program, not public relation services,” she wrote April 1.
In the letter sent to Bailey last week accusing her of “coercion” and “malicious intent,” BrewDog told Bailey the contingencies she collected from platform participants – the conditions they required to proceed with a reconciliation program – as “being unable to be considered by any company.”
BrewDog explained its decision to reject Hand & Heart’s services in a post to its Equity For Punks Forum, the online community for investors in its crowdfunding platform, the body of which was shared with Brewound. The “contingencies” would have “required lengthy management suspensions rendering it impossible to effectively run the business,” BrewDog wrote.
For its part, BrewDog underwent an organizational review and implemented suggested changes, including the creation of an “independently managed ethics hotline” and a new company code. BrewDog also enacted a company-wide pay review and raises, elected employee representative groups, hired training leaders and instituted career development reviews, and appointed mental health ambassadors.