Max Whitehead: Employment law expert on the investigations into Xero's former chief executive Sir Rod Drury

New Zealander of the Year, Sir Rod Drury, has been accused of inappropriate behaviour by a former Xero staffer. The woman made a complaint to Xero right before she left the company in 2017. Xero is now reviewing how they handled that and Sir Rod says he's not done anything wrong. Max Whitehead is an employment law expert at the Whitehead Group and with us. Hi, Max.

Hi, Hila.

Can we read anything into the review that's just been announced or is that just prudent reputation management by Xero?

Well, It's a mystery why Xero are taking any action, because in employment law, what can they do? There's a 90-day limit on taking a personal grievance, so that's not an option for the complainant. The other thing is that maybe the Human Rights Commission, but there's a 12-month limit on that. These allegations go back 10 years, so it really doesn't make a lot of sense, except is it reputational issues that Perhaps Xero's spending a fortune, maybe $30,000, $50,000, $80,000 on doing an investigation on this.

Yeah, presumably to clear their name and say they handled it properly, I would have thought. Given that both of them have left Xero, as in Sir Rod and also the woman who's made these allegations, even if the review did find something, Xero couldn't do anything to either of them, could it? No,

no, no. There's no action they could do. You're right about either of them.

I

mean, um, she potentially faces the, you know, she's raised a claim that has no substance to it. She could be disciplined if she was an employee, but my goodness, I mean, she left many, many, many years ago and waited till she left until she did raise the claim. And I think a couple of years had passed.

Now, the allegation is that he invited her. She's a junior staffer. He's the CEO. He invites her to her dinner at his house across the road. It seems to be just the pair of them. Afterwards, as he's letting her out the door, he says he wants to kiss her. She says no. He then doesn't kiss her. Is that a slam-dunk bad move from him? How much trouble is he in for that?

Well, a CEO should behave himself a lot better than that. That's not the sort of conduct you would expect from a CEO. But I mean, you would think that she's said no to a CEO and he's agreed with her. It was inappropriate. Um, I would have thought that would have, should have been the end of the matter, but, um, it, it, it's not, and she still wants to raise the matter. And it seems like when Sir Rod's reputation is at its peak, I thought it was years ago, but certainly it's even got higher now being a New Zealander of the year that, I mean, she wants, well, I don't know what she wants. because I don't see them to gain from her other than sitting in the sunlight with the media attention that she's getting.

Max, good to talk to you always, Iz. Thank you for your time. Max Whitehead, employment law expert at the Whitehead Group.