JUSTIN LEUSHNER

Vice-president, TechAlliance of Southwestern Ontario

It has been identified that the 15% finder’s fee for every student that is signed up by IIAD Global’s new recruitment officer is not financially viable, which I will take at face value. The immediate action required is to identify a means to revise the terms for this person’s contract in a manner that allows for the relationship to continue and is acceptable to the academic director as well. There are a number of different approaches to accomplishing this. However, in this instance, I believe beginning with a direct and frank phone conversation and a follow-up email explaining why the current situation is not sustainable is all CEO Mark Weyers can really do.

This situation brings up a number of additional issues of significant concern as well. It seems to me that much of this business is running off immediate opportunity and not a structured plan. This business model is, in essence, similar to a house of cards, which sounds negative, but many successful businesses were built off complexity. But it becomes paramount to develop processes and procedures and legal documents that help control the house of cards.

This company has partners in different geographies throughout the world, so cultural and international business law becomes a major component to its success. The academic director in the Philippines enjoys a large amount of freedom and apparently that is not working out. Therefore, the way forward will need to include the development and implementation of documented processes and procedures detailing how engaging these academic directors in different jurisdictions is to occur.

Ideally, there would have been the opportunity to think through all the different things that could go wrong and try to protect against each scenario. In this instance, Weyers has little choice but to do the best that he can with some overriding procedural documents and some blanket legal documents for IIAD’s academic directors and accept the reality that he will have to continue dealing with adverse events as they occur. IIAD Global CEO Mark Weyers spoke to an HR director who had significant experience managing university HR departments in the U.K. “She advised me not to go with the current contract as it was written and that I needed to have a discussion with the local academic director about a local staff recruitment process,” Weyers said. The local academic director, Harvey Chiles, was asked to have a discussion with Kevin, the new recruitment officer, to explain that an error had been made regarding the details of the contract (specifically referring to the commission rate) and that IIAD corporate would be issuing new contracts to all staff that supersede any previous agreements made at a local level. Weyers arranged a Skype meeting to discuss the situation with the IIAD corporate team to ensure all were clear about the recruitment process and who has hiring authority as they go forward.