The Chief People Officer, the Architect of Spin

100 Comments

Digitalis · 16 February 2025 at 15:39
University HR is normally incompetent and disorganised.
But the HR delays are deliberate.
First, it grinds their victim down & demoralizes them. The victim may become ill with stress which helps the university. Second, if something unlawful has happened, then it needs to be reported to Employment Tribunals quickly (often within 3 months or 6 months). The delay serves as a way to evade legal responsibilities. If HR take 6 months to respond, the university may already be safe from any legal consequences.
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Anon · 16 February 2025 at 16:05
awful
do they not understand the definition of “negligence”
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Engineer · 16 February 2025 at 21:30
So true.
Every time you email it is a new “out of office” autoreply
“Monday is my day off”
“I am on holiday until April 20”
“My working hours are 10am to 2pm”
It is time to send them back to Slough branch where they belong and let the real staff get the job done.
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Eileen Nugent · 18 February 2025 at 16:19
I think it’s important to find out what the real problem with HR is, to do that it’s important to keep an open mind about the root cause of the problem and to not make any assumptions about HR such as them all being lazy otherwise it won’t be possible to find out what the real problem is. If there is a problem with a specific subset of people in an organisation and they are all connected, i.e. members of HR, the problem could then be with the way the role has been set up rather than the people in it.
Academics are given no training about building sustainable working habits or differences between individuals in terms of the workload they can healthily sustain and how personal workloads can interact with employer workloads – something which impacts some individuals more than others e.g. those with more caring responsibilities. Just because on individual can do all-nighters and stay healthy it doesn’t mean others individuals can do so and it doesn’t mean the individual who is doing it is optimising their health by doing so. Sometimes a situation forces these extreme work habits temporarily, it doesn’t mean these type of unsustainable habits should become the norm for all academics all the time.
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21percent.org · 16 February 2025 at 15:34
We stand with Eileen Nugent.
She would be an excellent person to do this job.
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Seb · 16 February 2025 at 22:28
Sent pack of lies by HR person at 12.38 on Friday
Responded immediately saying this is a pack of lies at 12.41 on Friday
Received automatic response ”Thank you for your email. I am out of the office for 5 weeks.”
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numpy · 16 February 2025 at 22:44
they are worthless and should retrain and get real jobs
I still have 3 slots left in my intro to python course next term
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TigerWhoCametoET · 17 February 2025 at 12:55
There were a couple of nice people in HR, but it always seemed to me, like they were fighting the whole system and eventually simply gave up in despair. I think that is why they eventually can’t handle it and either take permanent holiday leave or simply stop doing their roles.

21percent.org · 17 February 2025 at 14:12
Eileen Nugent’s point is that the processes are wrong, not the people.
People end up behaving badly because they are forced to by the unsafe processes they are required to implement.
She has a point. This is a large part of the story.

Anonymous · 17 February 2025 at 15:41
Maybe it is the case that the system is leading some HR and senior managers to behave so poorly, but this would account for just a tiny fraction of the cases. Based on experience, I can say with certainly that HR staff and senior managers almost always have a clear *choice* to act, or not to act, in a particular way, and do the right thing. But they do not, and so actively chose to abuse. This happened at *all* levels of HR, and the higher up the HR chain you went, the worse the behaviour became. And it went right to the top. Don’t bother reporting this to the VC etc, as the matter will just be referred straight back to the Director of HR.

21percent.org · 17 February 2025 at 16:05
This is very concerning.
We have had a number of individuals claim that reporting alleged misbehaviour of the HR Director to the VC simply leads the VC to refer the matter back to the HR Director. We know of former members of the HR staff who allege this as well.
If true, this is a very serious failing.
What is certainly true is that the VC has repeatedly declined to act in a number of extremely grave cases.
A number of these are heading through the law courts.
We make no judgement here. Ultimately, the VC will be able to explain her actions in the courts.

Anonymous · 17 February 2025 at 16:57
Further to my comment above, this is indeed extremely concerning, if not deeply chilling. But it gets worse, and isn’t even limited to the VC or the Director of HR. There appears to be no actual safeguards in place at all. The danger this poses to staff safety is therefore obvious, because of this. There are whistleblower policies, but they are just there for presentation purposes only.
In my opinion, it is in the public interest for the full extent of the situation at certain UK Universities to be exposed. It is also important that accounts are shared when possible, and I hope this happens.

21percent.org · 17 February 2025 at 17:47
Your comments are very interesting.
We are aware that the whistleblowing policies are for presentation purposes. We are aware that there is no safety for whistleblowers, who are routinely attacked by HR.
We are aware of an important whistleblowing case going through the courts.
We agree that accounts should be shared.
Would you be able to contact the 21 Group in confidence at contact@21percent.org ? We would like to hear more.

Goldsworthy · 17 February 2025 at 19:34
Indeed the matter is entirely in the public interest as the institution is a public entity whose actions are of legitimate concern to the general public, government, parents and taxpayers. Any attempt to prevent debate on such matters would be in my view inconsistent with the requirements of a parliamentary democracv.
The Defamation Act 2013 makes clear provision for whistleblowers to make available relevant information in any respect and an attempt to suppress any allegation known to be true would be ipso facto vexatious and the Reynolds case offers legal precedent for the right to make available to the public allegations even prior to their veracity being confirmed or reasonably disputed.

21percent.org · 17 February 2025 at 19:56
Very interesting. So a whistleblower may reasonably make information publicly available before any court case.
Is the Reynolds case this one?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v_Times_Newspapers_Ltd

Eileen Nugent · 18 February 2025 at 00:03
If HR were not a real job in an organisation there would be no serious consequences when something went wrong with HR, but there are serious consequences when something goes wrong with HR and so it is a real job. HR are not worthless to an organisation as workers and every individual has the same worth as a person to the organisation. HR is not just people, HR has two elements, it has people and it has the set of people processes that the people in HR apply to all people in the organisation including to themselves.
The people processes include things like the hiring process that determines how people are hired, the promotions process, the firing process, the grievance process, the concerns process etc. People processes could in theory be automated e.g. the hiring process for secondary schools in the UK to hire physics teachers could be a decision loop – check for a physics degree and check for a valid DBS certificate and hire when both are conditions are true – there might be very little difference between the results of an automated people process and people processes that are administered by real people.
There can however be faults in the people processes themselves when the people processes fail to take into the full range of cases that could be encountered i.e. when they are not designed to handle exceptional or novel cases. For example, an individual applies with a biophysics degree and valid DBS certificate and automatically gets rejected, unnecessary stress is then generated for the interdisciplinary physicist. An individual applies with a physics degree and a valid DBS certificate and gets hired – since the newly formed Drunken Bowsy Society issued that particular type of DBS certificate and not the Disclosure and Barring Service, a source of unnecessary stress has been created for all students.
The role of the people in HR is to pick up on these exceptional cases where the people processes have gone wrong and to correct them to prevent people being unnecessarily stressed. The unnecessary stressed biophysicist emails the people in HR and explains they are a real physicist and can teach physics lessons, HR then gets unnecessarily stressed because something has gone wrong with the people processes but they work out what when wrong – failure to include interdisciplinary degrees – and correct the people processes for the current applicant who now gets hired and all future applicants with biophysics degrees who will also all automatically get hired in future preventing any further unnecessary stress of the current applicant, future applicants and HR themselves.
The Drunken Bowsy was asked by the school to take students on a skiing trip and as the BBC reported in a real school case they “failed to stop students shoplifting, drinking and engaging in sexual activity on a skiing trip”. A professional ban is required, the Drunken Bowsy is now extremely unnecessarily stressed [should never have been hired to a role they were mismatched for] – really drunk – a serious safeguarding risk, multiple students are traumatised [one student was blackmailed into having sex by another student] – a serious safeguarding risk, parents are extremely angry and ready to take matters into their own hands – a serious safeguarding risk, the whole school is extremely unnecessarily stressed because the police are doing interviews and its all over the media – serious safeguarding risk, Ofsted and the Teacher Regulation Agency are extremely unnecessarily stressed because they have to do some serious regulation, HR is given the job of coordinating the organisational response to the situation and are really, really fucking unnecessarily stressed and there is no easy fix to all that unnecessary stress generated and there is no getting out of that situation anytime soon. The people processes will now need to be updated to distinguish between the two different types of DBS certificate to keep the Drunken Bowsy Society members out of the school in future.
The biophysicist is likely to have no problem believing that all the people in HR care about other people. Try telling the parents of the students that all the people in HR care about other people when all the students are alive, now try telling them that when one student has died. The people in HR did not know the Drunken Bowsy society had just started issuing DBS certificates and thought that the DBS certificate was genuine Disclosure and Barring Service certificate. Problems with the people processes can be problems for all the people, the includes the people in HR.

Anon · 18 February 2025 at 09:25
Anonymous’ comments can be easily corroborated.
There is evidence of repeated unprofessional conduct by some HR individuals (who give themselves decisional powers the policies don’t allow for, and enable anything from catastrophic incompetence to sadistic malevolence).
If you send the evidence to the director of HR, she simply never acknowledges your message, your reminder, your further request.
If you complain about the director of HR to the relevant pro-VC, the same happens again: you get no reply for months on end, before being told that your case has already been dealt with.
If you refer the matter further to the VC, you get the same prose, the same arguments, the same logically defective waffle – no doubt written yet again by the same people.
Evidence is simply ignored; arguments are made by assertion and the only justification provided is that the signatories of the message are “satisfied” that processes have been followed. As others have noted, any student arguing in the same way would fail their first-year assessment.
It is a dangerously defective system which self-exonerates itself shamelessly and puts staff at very serious risk.

Anonymous · 18 February 2025 at 13:10
People interactions are indeed a complex beast, and it can be a huge challenge for HR to work with the infinite range of personality types, opinions, and emotions in a large organisation. But for grievances and whistleblowing cases at least, related problems can be greatly minimized if HR always behaved with integrity and professionalism, in all situations.
HR departments could save themselves a world of pain and grief by adopting this approach. It has already been pointed out that this is as much for their protection as it is for staff in general. This will obviously build trust over time, and the benefits of this would be significant and far reaching.
But part of the problem here is also that too many HR staff and senior managers do not seem to be adequately trained in ethics, and what it means to act with integrity and professionalism. Some may never understand this. Raising misconduct issues with such staff would be pointless, as some may genuinely not have a clue what you are talking about. Careful screening is needed at recruitment, but this appears not to be happening, at least not in the way that we would prefer.

Eileen Nugent · 18 February 2025 at 19:04
When navigating these extremely difficult and complex employment situations it is important to maintain an open mind, although continuously more energy consuming to maintain an open mind relative to a maintaining a closed mind, this reduces the chances of a complex situation rapidly spiralling out of all control. It’s important to operate on a trust and verify basis to prevent false accusations creeping into any grievance situation, something which would increase the complexity the case and the probability of it escalating up the whole organisation and becoming more deeply entrenched in the whole organisation.
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Eileen Nugent · 18 February 2025 at 19:12
In these difficult situations it is important not to assume things about individuals without doing any checking. If you assume an individual is a certain way and behave towards them as if they are that way then you will never give either yourself or the individual to chance to find out who either of you really are.

Elias · 17 February 2025 at 19:47
The people strategy document is really pathetic. It undermines our reputation as a world class university, and damages our global standing. We would have been better publishing nothing at all.
What really shocks me is that it looks like it was written using ChatGPT. I just asked it to design a generic university “people strategy” and it gave me the same canned context-free bullshit.
We would indeed fail our own students for this.
How much did we pay for this rubbish? And can we please have our money back?
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Eileen Nugent · 18 February 2025 at 18:44
The people strategy has to come from all the people still in the organisation and not from someone who is now external the organisation. Those who have left the organisation can still give useful information if a significant organisational fault – one which could impact others still in the organisation caused them to leave – information that is required to fix the organisational fault and to prevent a future reoccurrence of the same impact on others still in the organisation, but it is the people who are still in the organisation who need to develop the people strategy because it is their lives that the people strategy is directly impacting going forward and not the lives of those now external to the organisation. Those inside the organisation have the most up to date information about the current state of the organisation and whether the current people strategy is working for the organisation or whether it is causing the whole organisation significant unnecessary stress i.e. resources spent but not useful work done towards organisational goals.
This task should not be given to one person and certainly not to a person who is now external to the organisation. The people in the organisation should set the people strategy and then seek external advice to check whether there are any foreseeable conflicts between the people strategy developed and the current external reality of the organisation. Since all the people in the organisation are in direct contact with the external reality of the organisation the people strategy, if frequently updated, should be relatively well matched to the external reality of the organisation – any changes in the matching will show up as changes in organisational stress levels. If the organisational becomes more matched, the whole organisation will feel an increase the levels of wellbeing, if it becomes more mismatched wellbeing levels will dip.
That said there may be differences in the understanding possessed by individuals in the organisation of the external reality – more detailed knowledge of the structure and complexity of the external reality – and some individuals would then be in a better position to do a more precise matching of the organisation to its external reality. The main point still stands, the people strategy has to come from within the organisation, no one person in the organisation should be given control over it, if an individual in an organisation is behaving well towards the organisation that good behaviour should be reciprocated by the organisation in relation to the individual. That reciprocity should hold for all individuals in the organisation.
I also would not fire someone for doing something without first finding out what happened i.e. taking the time to do an accurate analysis. Otherwise it’s not possible to tell whether there really is a problem and whether the person who is angry really is ready to fix a problem for you. Those who have an accurate analysis of a problem are less likely to feel anger about a problem though they could still remain driven to fix it, anger is usually a sign of not having fully understood something, it’s a recognition that something needs to change but with an unresolved uncertainty over whether it is the external reality or the individual themselves that needs to change. I also would not take the job of someone fired in this way, as I would not want to work for an organisation that takes this approach to people. I would want direct critical feedback on my work, time to understand that feedback, and a chance to fix any problems. That is what allows continuous role matching for individuals inside any organisation and prevents people spending significant amounts of time in roles they are not well matched something which benefits no one.
I have given my thinking on people strategies in general but I have not produced a people strategy for an organisation that I am no longer in as this would not be appropriate as per the arguments set out above.
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Divinity · 18 February 2025 at 19:04
Eileen: As a practicing Christian, I admire your ability to turn the other cheek.
But I also have another belief:
When you have run out of cheeks to turn, it is time to start kicking arse.
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21percent.org · 18 February 2025 at 19:43
Like Magdalen Connolly, Eileen Nugent is another very admirable individual who has been extremely badly treated by the University
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TexMex · 18 February 2025 at 20:24
“When you have run out of cheeks to turn, it is time to start kicking arse”
Damn right I love it! And its in the bible kid 😉

Divinity · 18 February 2025 at 21:18
thanks yes – well possibly part of a non-canonical gospel I suppose

JCsuper* · 22 February 2025 at 20:21
>>When you have run out of cheeks to turn, it is time to start kicking arse
For the record, I approve this message

Eileen Nugent · 18 February 2025 at 21:58
I feel that at some point if there is to be real culture change, it has to begin with an act that is representative of the new culture that people are seeking to achieve and not the old culture that people are seeking to get rid of. If the new culture is that everyone is treated fairly and reasonably and with dignity and respect that then has to underpin how any currently unresolved situation is handled going forward. I found this whole situation extremely damaging but I don’t want to waste any more of my life participating in the same type of damaging behaviour that I am trying to get out of my life.
I see no benefit to any individual of continuing this cycle of damage to health – it’s like a circular series of stress dominoes then never then stops. I have left the organisation, I reported concerns to give the organisation any useful information I had to allow it to do preventative changes. I am open to what life will bring and rehabilitating myself back into work through self employment. When it comes to these difficult issues, everyone’s situation is unique and it’s up to everyone to find their own way forward. What works for some may not work for others. I found it best to raise these issues as a public interest health and safety concern rather than a private interest employment dispute. I found it best to not care about holding on to a particular role in a particular organisation or financial compensation but to just focus on doing what was best for my health and preserving my ability to care and to do work. That option was barely open for me because it was an extremely challenging struggle along every dimension – health, social, financial, housing – up until very recently, it was a higher intermediate risk to my health because it seemed to prolong the whole situation compared to going to employment tribunal because I couldn’t get any of these concerns processes to work at all, but I think that route did give me the best health outcome in the end. That option may not be open to others at all because of their personal constraints. I would never go through that type of situation again which is why I now evaluate the organisations I interact with in a completely different way to avoid these types of difficulties that I don’t want in my life.
I am through this now and I have no wish to go near an employment tribunal. I don’t see how these organisations can change without have the public resources to pay for that change and I have no desire to extract public resources if that is going the run the organisation even further down and make it less safe for others in similar positions to the one I was in. Some people have no choice, they do need to go to employment tribunal because they cannot financially survive without going and there is no shame in that. I could barely take this path, but I have managed to take it now, and I am off in search for a better life, one where I don’t have to spend anymore of my time of this same type of complete bullshit that I wanted out of my life. I have seen enough of the brutal costs of severe mental health to know that career and financial losses are not the worst thing that can happen to you in life.
I would never have gone into academia if I had known how mentally abusively it is possible for an organisation to treat people in academia but I had no idea up until Cambridge because I was never treated so badly by any employer in my whole life. Worked many jobs to get through my education – all kinds of farm work, childcare, bar work, garden centre, pet shop, floristry, cafes, Christmas elf, hamper packing, administrative work, lab work, teaching – and I have never been treated more inhumanely that in Cambridge. The organisation didn’t want to comply with employment law and it wanted to make me pay the costs (health, financial, employment, accommodation) of that non-compliance.
This organisation can keep the wages, worth every penny to not have to interact with an organisation in such an exceptional state of failure. I complied with my health and safety legal obligations to others and now I am off to live a better life. Composted my Cambridge PhD degree on the way out for good measure. I managed to liberate myself but not everyone is so fortunate, not everyone makes it out of these situations alive, but I could do it so I did do it. I won’t be scarred by the actions of an organisation that are not worth respecting.
I can completely understand why others might want to start kicking Cambridge University up the arse and who knows that might even be the right approach in some individual cases. I always had my overall health situation to consider and the health and safety approach always then seemed to be right approach except none of these work-related stress processes seem to have actually been built to enable people to safely take this approach. It turned into a type of work-related stress hunger games situation where you were constantly forced to to take complex individual actions in reaction to inappropriate organisational actions to minimise your stress to sustainable levels and to survive it and comply with your legal obligations. It shouldn’t be like that, it should be possible to take this path and have these work-related stress issues dealt with in a quick and safe manner even if the underlying cause of the work-related stress dysregulation is employment dysregulation.
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Universitaires Sans Frontieres · 18 February 2025 at 22:12
“I had no idea up until Cambridge because I was never treated so badly by any employer in my whole life”
The same for me. I have worked in many dangerous parts of the world and seen bad things, happen to good people.
But I have never, ever seen the same kind of deliberate abuse and negligence of trained professionals that I have witnessed at Cambridge. Even in war zones or disaster relief, if we had professional staff, we would do everything possible to ensure they were protected and safe given the circumstances.
Making the comparison, I genuinely think Cambridge is a more dangerous employer than an NGO posting in a context such as Iraq or Yemen.
It is sad to say it. But this is my honest judgement.

Eileen Nugent · 18 February 2025 at 23:09
One of the most low individual energy cost solutions to these types of difficult situations can be to find another position that is exactly the same as your current one in another organisation and to leave without reporting any problems. Secondary school teacher in Cambridge – can be very doable with very little disruption during the transition and with very little impact on your life. Might not be the safest for the students, all these stressed teachers stuck in organisations with problems that are generating unnecessary stress that no one has the energy to report, but if you have no spare energy at all – three young children not letting you sleep – this is the lowest energy option. Highly specialised lab-based academic group leader in a “world leading” university – far more complex work-related stress challenge – putting up an intense struggle to fend any unethical organisational challenge off might be worth the short term increase in health risk for a long term reduction in health risk. If the organisation is resisted successfully, it is less likely to try the same rubbish on you or other individuals in the organisation again.

Anonymous · 21 February 2025 at 12:23
At first, the post by Universitaires Sans Frontieres struck me as as hyperbole.
Then I thought about it, and realized that no, in fact, if we measure the rate of current and former at the university who suffer from complications such as post-traumatic stress, suicidal depression, and trauma-induced physical illness, the rate is quite possibly higher than it is for the armed forces, or for emergency relief organizations such as doctors without borders.

Eileen Nugent · 21 February 2025 at 13:38
My case was different to Magdalen Connolly’s whose problem started with the behaviour of a specific individual. In my case the root cause of the problem was short term employment contract use that was not consistent with employment law. I was given a three-year fixed term contract to turn myself into an independent group leader in a world-leading university which is an excessive time pressure to be put under [usual timeframe is 5 years] in an already high pressure environment. In terms of the people around me, no one individual was making life particularly difficult for me. I wasn’t going into the department and feeling permanently isolated, there were plenty of kind people distributed throughout the whole department in all different kinds of roles. In terms of the role however I was basically just left to get on with it, had very little contact with my assigned line manager [head of department], met 1-2 times a year. The only time when people made life particularly difficult for me was when it came to taking decisions on employment contracts, then it was a complete nightmare.
I was struggling in the new lectureship role I had landed myself and continuously self evaluating my own performance and trying to improve it to get to the standard I could see was required of that role with the aim of then finding a permanent position elsewhere. All I wanted to do during this time was to fix problems I had recognised with my own performance, optimise my own performance in that particular role so that I could be in a position to move to another university and not instantly have the same performance problems in that new position and generate lots of problems for other people.
After trying to apply all the existing performance management advice to the situation I realised that what I was lacking was of a detailed understanding of mental health which seemed to be the barrier to optimising performance in a high pressure environment. I then made this the focus of my research which was possible because there was a physics of medicine initiative and optimising mental health to optimise performance is medicine. I then started using the insight I was continuously gaining from the research to determine what changes to make to improve my performance in other aspects of the role and in the other roles I had. That was a far more complex challenge than I ever expected and it took significantly longer than expected to get it right – I would get things wrong and then have to correct them making performance errors all along the way before eventually working it all out – including work-related stress component – and finding out how to correct all different types of performance errors.
At the point I was put through a sham redundancy process at the end of the fixed-term lectureship the university had made so many significant employment errors I could have easily threatened the university with legal action and obtained a permanent position as a PI in the university that way despite underperforming in the role at the time [self evaluation]. I didn’t do this because I didn’t think it was the right thing to do, I thought it was a waste of public resources to enter into a messy employment dispute at that stage. I just wanted to focus on improving my performance and fixing all the problems with it before moving to another employer where everyone could then benefit from an individual continuously performing well in a role they were well matched to.
It was only during and after the sham redundancy process that I realised there are no safeguards on work-related stress regulation in employment at the university. The university would do anything – not to avoid going to an employment tribunal – but to generate the evidence it would need to enable it to push a difficult case out to an employment tribunal to get rid of it should that become necessary. Offer teaching, get and individual to sign off on end of contract paperwork, retract teaching offer causing loss of accommodation, exceptionally stress employer actions. At that point I raised employment practices as a health and safety concern because I felt these practices were unsafe for every individual in the organisation and were creating significant amounts of unnecessary stress and a serious health risk. The way the concern was handled lead to the work-related stress spiral out of control. The worse that situation got, the stronger the legal obligation to other individuals to raise concerns became, the more I raised concerns, the worse the situation got. Eventually I was forced to raise concerns with national regulators.
As that situation got worse and worse I continuously asked the university to do something, anything, to rectify my employment situation which at that point had become so stressful it was seriously impacting my health and making it difficult for me to do any work – including college roles I had always performed well in. I asked to be restored the lectureship role to allow me to complete this process of becoming a group leader and to optimise my performance in the role so I could then move on to the same role in another employer. Despite the university having made large numbers of employment errors including having no objective justification for making that lectureship contract a temporary contract in the first place meaning that it likely the university had unintentionally given me a permeant lectureship role and put me through many years of unnecessary stress, it was not prepared to even communicate about the situation or to do anything about it at all.
I personally feel that an employment tribunal would have been a waste of public resources in this particular case, public resources that could be put into student support or other areas of significant organisational need. Maintaining continuously high performance requires a reciprocal relationship with an organisation [reciprocal care], it doesn’t exist for early career academics in Cambridge, if you want an environment that will support performance at an exceptionally level in core activities – teaching, research, student support – Cambridge as it stands is not that environment.
Cambridge doesn’t want to fix any of its problems and it doesn’t support any individual who is continuously trying to fix their own problems either. I have found solutions to problems with my own performance and ways to manage it in high pressure situations. I had legal obligations to other individuals to raise concerns to give the organisational the information it needs to fix its employment problems to prevent the professional growth of other young academics from being stunted in the same way. There is a better life to be had than the one current on offer in a universities and I am off to find it. I won’t spend years of my life in garbage legal processes that are extracting huge amounts of pubic resources from failing organisations pushing them to ever greater states of failure. National regulators all the way, raising concerns to get the actual problems identified and fixed all the way.
When there are significant problems with organisational processes – employment processes, grievance processes, concerns processes – that is regulatory matter, employment tribunals were set up to rectify employment problems for an individual, they were not set up to address systemic issues – problems with processes – like the ones currently at play in the university. If these problems are not addressed, eventually everyone being put through these processes and everyone handling these processes will be completely burnt out and the university drained of its public resources.
I have learned the ins and outs of managing performance in a high pressure environment and the exceptional health risks that can be generated when an organisational will not respond in these high-risk situations. It was enough to get me out of the problematic employment situation and to report the concerns to reduce the risk of others ending up in a similarly problematic employment situations. Won’t waste years of my life on garbage legal processes trying to extract public resources from an organisation that cannot even behave itself in court. Won’t waste years of my life on garbage legal processes trying to get reinstated to an organisation that cannot behave itself in relation to any individual. There is a better life to be had and things that will contribute more value to society to be done with it.

Eileen Nugent · 21 February 2025 at 15:25
I feel Universitaires Sans Frontieres makes a very good point. I think the crux of the problem is this : the current university thinking is the if it cares too about any individual that will infantilise everyone the university, stop them all being adults and being responsible for their own behaviour and reduce their productivity and ability to compete. It uses the current thinking to not care at the level of the organisational about any individual in the organisation and to avoid all responsibility for its own organisational behaviour. That organisational thinking can therefore be exceptionally stressful for individuals who get caught in the wrong position in the organisation and the exceptional levels of unnecessary stress generated can cause the individual to enter into a high risk mental state. Like for any individual in any high risk situation – car crash, war-zone shooting – for an organisation to support an adult to get through that high risk situation is not infantilising the adult and preventing them being an adult, its not allowing them to abdicate responsibility for their own behaviour or reducing their productivity and ability to compete, its just getting someone through and out of an extremely difficult situation and back to themselves so that they can get on with their life. Some will be able recover fully from these situations, some could end up with a permanent disability that organisations would then need to adjust for to maintain the best reciprocal relationship with the individual possible. When that understanding and support is not there in these high risk health situations it is degrading, dehumanising and leads to situations where there is prolonged mental torture (prolonged patterns of complex stressors left on the individual) as the organisation tries to evade all responsibility for its own organisational behaviour at the level of the organisation which is determined by these organisational processes.

Digitalis · 16 February 2025 at 18:25
Superb.
In the space of an hour or so, you have come up with a cogent set of suggestions that would immeasurably improve matters in the University
The University have been toiling for years to articulate what its People Strategy actually is.
The VC in her annual address said “The People Strategy is a suite of initiatives designed to strengthen our ability to attract, develop, and reward talent, build community, and run an effective organisation. It includes a review of our pay offer and grading structure, as well as the design and implementation of the new HR system. It includes a project on reducing the gender pay gap and one on improving support for academic staff through the retirement process, a need highlighted by the EJRA debate this summer. The People Strategy is a huge undertaking, very ambitious, and absolutely necessary to the goal of making Cambridge an excellent place to work.”
Not sure any of this has actually happened, and the “new HR system” has just been delayed for 3 years, apparently because of incompatibility with existing software (a foreseeable problem).
Doubt if anyone in senior administration has the expertise to do or assess any serious coding, so this must be some bespoke package designed at enormous expense by some external consultancy. Anyone know?
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Battle_axe · 16 February 2025 at 21:10
Agreed. If it were my decision to make, you’d be hired.
Plus I would hire Eileen to work on the health and safety plan as she seems to understand what is required a lot better than idiots who are responsible for the current mess
One more thing is that the KPI list for the new heads of HR needs specific indicators based on internal data. I.e. reduce the rate of unresolved disputes from A to B within timeframe C , aim to reduce rate of staff sickness from stress from A to B within timeframe C , reduce rate of staff churn from D to E by date F
also set up clear, open and transparent metrics for auditing the level “talent” across departments by year outside of the REF yet linked to REF criteria such as publication quality and quantity, citation impact, research newspaper mentions, number of grant applications, endowments and donations, research income and clear metrics of pay gaps relative to performance and career stage
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100% · 16 February 2025 at 21:44
Excellent. No more “strategy documents”. No more waffle. No more management speak bullshit
Only
metrics
objectives
target dates
execution strategy
12 month and 24 month performance review with all staff invited to attend
We are the university
You work for us
Never forget this fact
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Sappho · 17 February 2025 at 08:45
“We are the university
You work for us
Never forget this fact”
Absolutely fabulous. I want this printed on a T shirt.
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Eileen Nugent · 19 February 2025 at 18:16
No point hiring an Individual who has already liberated themselves from the organisation to do the organisational health and safety plan. Again this is a distributed task, the health and safety would need to be integrated into the whole organisation. Putting these work-related stress processes in place is essentially like putting stress fire doors in the organisation to prevent unregulated stress propagating through the whole organisation and being amplified as it gets escalated. This is a whole organisation task, this is a whole organisation health and safety plan. It’s a task for those still in the organisation. This health and safety responsibility cannot be left in the hands of one person in the organisation, they would suffer extreme burnout.
In terms of rates of unresolved disputes, staff sicknesses – an organisation could set static targets like these but as soon as a major organisational stressor hits these targets will then be history. It would to look at speed and accuracy of the processes handling disputes and seek to optimise and control that because this is what would need to be done in response to organisational stressors and it would allow the impact of organisational stressors to be detected.
In terms of how people want their performance to be evaluated relative to each other, this is one for all the people currently in the organisation. That is a major organisational decision. Any pay gap data would need to continuously be carefully monitored and analysed as that is potential discriminatory non payment of wages.
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DestroyingAngel · 17 February 2025 at 06:35
“I [name – head of HR] and [deputy head of HR] personally commit that within 24 months of our appointment to the role, we will achieve the following KPIs.”
Of course, much of the present management will have to go.
Fortunately, there is an extinction level event that will wipe out most of the senior management coming up next year in the Courts.
Not even obvious the VC will survive, but no hope for the rest of them.
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no more tears · 17 February 2025 at 09:02
“there is an extinction level event that will wipe out most of the senior management”
finally our past is their future
how unfortunate for them
teardrop teardrop
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Anon · 17 February 2025 at 09:33
Good riddance to the HRthropocene.
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Eileen Nugent · 19 February 2025 at 17:49
1. In terms of resolution of complaints – it’s not clear whether a work-related stress problem could or should be handled in the way suggested above. It seems to demand a completely different process, a concerns process that progresses to the whistleblowing process and then out to a national regulator. In serious cases of work-related stress if there is no work-related stress risk management process in place – unions, ACAS, solicitors cannot safely deal with them. The health and safety executive should be involved and there would need to be continuous work-related stress management until the issues were resolved.
2 & 3. Workload data should be accurate and it should be possible to detect significant changes in workload. If there are teams of staff collectively doing a task for an organisational and collectively working over the legal limits – European directive 48 hrs per week – the whole team would be at risk of burnout. There might then no isolation from the stress generated by one colleague falling ill and taking sick leave. This then leaves the whole team vulnerable to a rapid and negative work-related stress spiral where more and more colleagues go off sick if there is no external worker pool to draw on. Example : team of 10 junior doctors working 60 hours per week [25% overwork] – one falls ill [38% overwork] for remaining 9 doctors, two fall ill [56% overwork] for remaining 8 doctors – with no external worker bank to draw in its a work-related stress death spiral.
4. In terms of key performance indicators – self-regulation in the role, keeping targets on point for the organisation by keeping in synch with internal organisational challenges and keeping in synch with the external obligations of organisation – would be key performance indicators.
5. Without a work-related stress regulation system in place I would not tackle bullying and harassment. Without such a system there is no way of detecting whether what is being done is generating more work-related stress than is strictly necessary to have the problem addressed for the subset of people in the organisation impacted by the case.
6. I saw no evidence of any real whistleblower protections in the UK. What’s being done seems to amount to mental torture.
7. Other universities such as Imperial seem to have done better on improving pay and conditions than Cambridge e.g tighter range of salaries for academics at different stages of career that spreads the financial reward more evenly across the academic career trajectory and increases stability and ability of more junior academic staff to stabilise there accommodation earlier in their career which makes a huge difference to those starting a family.
8. I wouldn’t have a specific target to reduce legal services costs by x amount, but rather a continuous target to minimise legal costs.
9. For external consultancy contracts for anything, I would not have a policy that absolutely prohibits it but a policy that minimises the use of such contracts.
I am not sure about health insurance because I would like to be able to believe in the NHS but I could only get some of it to work for me and I had to pay to get a higher standard of care at critical points on this health journey so I could avoid the exceptional stress of having to interact with some of the NHS.
Pensions : I think it would be good to have had the option to get the employer contributions and select an alternative pension scheme. Spare any interactions with the USS, it is not possible to feel that funds are safe with USS, there is always the appearance of them fucking something up.
Early career support : Needs to be developed with the early career researchers currently in the organisation and they need to be given extra time – contract extension – and funding to complete the development of the right support processes. The organisation cannot just load overload them with another task – develop early career support process – and try to extract yet more work out of them whilst not actually supporting the ones actually developing the support processes, that would be insane but not unlike the typical Cambridge approach to these issues.
Getting processes in place to minimise all unnecessary forms of discrimination is extremely challenging in a globally competitive organisation. What this essentially means is maintaining a fairly ruthless form of discrimination – academic standards matching and/or organisational role matching – whilst continuously detecting and minimising all other unnecessary forms of discrimination. Again I would not do this without a work-related stress regulation system in place. If role matching is being impacted, that will show up as an increase in organisational stress and its a key indicator that the discrimination minimisation is not actually working as intended. If the organisation would like to rebalance itself to increase representation from a particular group it then needs to work harder – search harder for candidates from the under represented group that are matched for the role, develop its own internal programs to support a pipeline of individuals from under-represented groups in consultation with the under-represented group to facilitate entry into the organisation and support individuals to remain matched to it throughout that journey. If an individual is not matched to a role in an organisation, not only is it more stressful for the organisation, it is also more stressful for the individual. It important not to make assumptions about what any individual or group of individuals can do without putting a system in place to check what any individual can really do. Discrimination arising from one individual being prejudiced against another individual in an under-represented group will also show up in an increase in work-related stress for the individual being discriminated against, something which could have an impact on their performance, the sooner that is caught the better otherwise the organisation could lose an exceptional individual for no good reason and the individual could come to falsely believe they were not matched for a particular role.
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Elias · 17 February 2025 at 20:11
Oxonian: There was a survey at the start of last year, but as far as anyone knows who I have spoken with, the data just disappeared in to the electronic aether and has never been seen again since. We have no idea what the results were and they haven’t bothered to run the survey again. It is such a shame because indeed we could have “leaned in” to help as you say. Instead it is just another sad illustration of the paranoid information secrecy of this institution and how it is throttling any prospect of improvement or reform.
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21percent.org · 17 February 2025 at 20:40
The 21 Group has the survey results for a number of departments.
Astronomy, Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, Chemistry, Clinical Biochemistry, Clinical Neuroscience, Clinical School Office, Computer Science, Cancer Research UK, Earth Sciences, Education, Finance Division, Fitzwilliam Museum, Geography, Genetics, Haematology, Health & Safety, History, HR division, ICE, Isaac Newton Institute, Kettles Yard, Material Sciences & Metallurgy, Mathematics, Medicine, MRC Biostatistics Unit, MRC Cognitive Sciences, MRC Epidemiology, MRC Toxicology, Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Oncology, SCM, Pathology, Physiology, Physics, Psychiatry, Psychology, Public Health, Clinical Medicine, Physical Sciences, Scott Polar Institute, Sedgwick Museum, UAS, University Library, Development & Alumni Relations, Vet School
We’ll be providing our own analysis shortly.
Lots of departments are missing, including some known problematic ones like Architecture, POLIS and Engineering.
If your department is missing, please can you ask your Head of Department to request the data at a departmental level from the Staff Culture Survey from HR & preferably let us know as well that you have made the request.
Of course, your point is correct. The university has brilliant data scientists, statisticians, and occupational health scientists who could analyse the data and help the university improve … but the data are held in the clammy hands of the administration and can’t even be prised free without an enormous battle.
My understanding is soon, HR will release its Report on the Staff Culture Survey. This no doubt will be just like the People Strategy document.
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Engineer · 17 February 2025 at 20:55
That is incredible. Amazing work!
It does not surprise me that these departments were missing – but seriously, on what possible grounds could they withhold the data, when other departments are prepared to be open?! That is simply absurd!
This in itself tells us all we need to know about the departments that are dragging this university down with staff abuse and bad behaviour. I hope our colleagues in the other sciences will help us to find out the real picture and live up to their (obviously higher) standards.
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Gaslit · 18 February 2025 at 07:42
98% rate of staff satisfaction? Not even North Korea would produce a figure that ridiculous
Every survey thus far has a fifth to a third saying they are subject to bullying
We are mired in strikes, tribunals and grievances
Do they think we are total fucking idiots? Who do they think they are fooling with these lies?
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21percent.org · 18 February 2025 at 09:02
Staff surveys in our possession show that there are some Cambridge departments in which 40-50 % of staff experience bullying over last 12 months.
This is grounds for a complaint to the Health and Safety Executive that the University is actually breaching its legal duty of care.
There are clearly some departments that need to be taken into immediate special measures for the safety of the individuals in the departments.
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Anon · 18 February 2025 at 08:10
It is not staff “satisfaction” but rather ” 98% of staff reported feeling empowered and supported in their professional roles reflecting the institution’s dedication to offering opportunities for personal and professional growth”
“98% of the Korean people have reaffirmed their unbounded faith in the unshakeable leadership of the Dear Leader and unwavering rededication to collective struggle against foreign menacing forces”
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Anonymous · 18 February 2025 at 13:23
Why not conduct a survey completely independently of this or other University?
This way, anonymity can be actually guaranteed, with no – unreasonable – redactions applied either.
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BigBard · 19 February 2025 at 11:16
Indeed. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a multi-million pound annual donation agreement with the UK’s leading polling company, run by an expert in global survey research?
oh we do let me contact them
oh wait no
problem
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If money go before · 20 February 2025 at 12:43
This is what truly gets me in a tizzy. It is not simply that they bullied and harassed early career researchers whom we had hired to build the partnership. It is the fact that our numbskulls running HR and legal delivered immense financial damage to our school and to the university (apparently their employer and client). They should be held accountable for that and pay us back the millions of lost funds.
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Eileen Nugent · 19 February 2025 at 18:42
Prisoners in a prisoner of war camp can feel valued, supported and connected to one another. Max Perutz described his time in one of these environments during WWII – there can be extremely high engagement, collaboration and inclusivity in these groups of prisoners in prisoner-of-war camp environments. Still in that prison camp though aren’t they. An organisational culture survey needs to be very carefully designed to pick up cultural faults at the level of the organisation, faults engrained in the people processes.
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21percent.org · 18 February 2025 at 08:52
We believe that a link was sent to staff on 17 January 2024.
Our highly paid senior management could not even get that right.
Every individual got a personalised link to a claimed “anonymous” survey.
So each individual got an individually identifiable link, even though the university claimed this survey was “anonymous”.
That means in the responses they collect, they can match each response with the email address to which it was sent.
This is a major ethical violation as well as illegal under GDPR.
Many scientists noticed this, so participation in some science departments < 10 %
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21percent.org · 18 February 2025 at 09:10
The correct word to use to describe the survey was “confidential” not “anonymous”
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TigerWhoCametoET · 18 February 2025 at 09:34
I am really confused how they can claim 98% support when there are departments reporting 50% bullying.
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Anonymous · 18 February 2025 at 09:11
How on earth is that “recent”? That’s over a year ago!
Given how slow they are in dealing with staff complaints it is pretty telling that a one year delay counts as “recent” for them…
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Smiley's Happy People · 18 February 2025 at 15:08
Oh, the case to fire them is so, so much stronger than this, it doesN’T even feature on the list %shp%
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WindyMiller · 18 February 2025 at 16:47
The case to fire them is based on multiple breaches of Health and Safety legislation on behalf of multiple people, as well as gross professional misconduct.
However, the bungling delay of a big HR software project till some unspecified time in the future may actually do the trick. This is likely.to cost the University many, many millions.
It’s the bottom line, nothing else ever really matters to the people who run the university.
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Eileen Nugent · 19 February 2025 at 19:00
I think they ended up with lots of HR problems and could find no rational explanation for having so many of them. I think they then ended up collecting data that – in the absence of any rational explanation for the root cause of these HR problems – generated so many conflicts with the thinking they were applying to the problems, that it was not possible for them to tell what they should do or what new approach they should take and they then did what all confused organisations do, they froze.
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Class = · 18 February 2025 at 22:23
OK so let me get this straight. That “98%” happy staff figure – that is based on them excluding 3/4 of departments and then basing this on a few at <10% response rate?
I really hate to say it, but here goes: "we would fail our students for this"
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Don Quixotic · 18 February 2025 at 22:41
So much for our “standards of excellence”
Now here’s how we uphold our standards in future
FIRE THE IDIOTS IN HR WHO PRODUCE SUCH CODSWALLOP
thank you and good night my colleagues
supervisions start early in morning urgh
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Cambridge Requiem · 18 February 2025 at 21:38
I love our university with my life. I love seeing the cows on the commons on a misty morning; I love walking over Mathematical Bridge and admiring the ideas that it represents; I love seeing our students transform like butterflies each May, ready to start the rest of their lives.
But true love, means telling hard truths… and asking people to change and do better.
So Cambridge, my love… I am sorry but we do not, at all, deserve this award. One day, together, I hope that we will get there. But right now, we need to face hard facts – hard truths that mean looking in the mirror, doing the work, and making the change to ourselves that we need.
We have a beautiful future to look forward to one day. But right now, we need to make amends with those we have wronged, acknowledge our faults, and truly become that fair, kind and decent employer we want others to see in us.
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DestroyingAngel · 19 February 2025 at 07:19
A lyrical post. Maybe I felt like that 15 years ago.
The culture of an organisation is set by the people at the top. They need to lead by example.
If university leaders want big salaries, this comes with responsibility to lead & reform complex organisations
Most (all?) of the senior positions in the University are not filled by people who have the right character, determination or skillset to do this.
We are facing some years of gradual decline (of which university culture is one example). Matters won’t improve unless a number of key individuals are replaced.
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Eileen Nugent · 19 February 2025 at 19:08
Families will be submitting this as evidence to a coroner in the event of death to demonstrate the gap between what is being said and what is being done in the organisation. Fix the most significant problem first, the one that applies to all individuals in the organisation.
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"Don Vito" · 19 February 2025 at 10:57
Their capacity for avoiding accountability is phenomenal. In a university famous for “managing upwards” (and never once looking down at those you are pooping on) they have set fresh records for invisibility and negligence
they should not be in charge of anything or anyone
now is their time to enjoy the library in peace and write whatever novel they have been storing within all these years
the old boys be boys no more, it is finally time to let the old trees fall, let there be light for young saps at last.
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DestroyingAngel · 19 February 2025 at 12:47
I cannot think of anyone less suitable to be Head of House than the ‘Teddy Bear’
With the sole exception of the ‘Concerned Brow’
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Anon · 19 February 2025 at 13:18
This is the shifty school boy from the Dignity at Work video who looks like he was caught stealing sweeties from the tuck shop?
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( ) · 19 February 2025 at 17:41
maybe he was stealing them for the teddy bear
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Flyonthewall · 19 February 2025 at 14:08
To this day, no-one knows why Professor “Nice but Managerially Dim” took the role. It was a surprise to everyone that he applied. It was a surprise that he got it. It remains a total mystery what he was aiming to achieve. In three years he has never met with staff or sent a introductory email to say hello. No-one knows why he is still there after making so many fundamental cock-ups.
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Anon · 19 February 2025 at 14:37
I am sure Mr “Big G” has the answer
He is like a flight recorder of all scandals at the School
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Mr Black · 19 February 2025 at 21:31
I guess. Though not much chance of access if he was also the copilot

Anon · 20 February 2025 at 09:40
I think you may be talking about two separate people… one with a lot more flying hours and NTSB reports than the other

Harry S Truman · 20 February 2025 at 10:08
yes how unfortunate it would be to have received such a generic name that you would feel the need to insist people use your middle initial

Thales · 19 February 2025 at 18:38
Bookmakers Odds
‘Concerned Brow’ is in the shit. The stench is too overpowering for any College. If appointed, so much would enter the public domain, it would be the PR equivalent of the Hindenburg (to use an aerodynamical metaphor). 100/1
‘Teddy Bear’ is kinda still lovable. The sense of sin has not left him. He’s like a Teddy Bear who sneaks off with your socks or smartphone and hides them. He knows he’s being bad. Not out of the question for a College like Magdalene to make him Head from a weak field. 15/1
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Anonymous · 19 February 2025 at 19:52
Fair point. It may be the difference between malice and negligence.
Many academics (from the VC down) are unwitting teddy bears, who do not realise they are surrounded by wolves, and perhaps it is hard for them, too, when they realise – all too late – the real truth about what is really going on.
The moral test is what they do next.
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Anon · 19 February 2025 at 21:31
🐺

Jungian · 19 February 2025 at 21:52
You know this is actually a really interesting general point of discussion about staff abuse in academia, because — intentionally or not, I do not know —- it touches upon one of the key issues in this conversation.
In most other sectors of employment, abusers don’t get away with their abuse for as long as they have here.
Either someone spots the bad behaviour, and calls them out. Or, a victim puts up resistance, and gives them a taste of their own medicine, leaving them with a bloody nose (and quite likely a pink slip). Either way, within six months to a year, they are out.
In our university admin, however, we have some truly horrifying perpetrators. And they survive.
I do think a key aspect is your implicit point about being able to act as a “wolf among sheep” (or “teddy bears” if you insist).
For a psychopath administrator who enjoys power, pain and the infliction of suffering, we as academics make for their perfect prey.
After all, our nature is to be introverted, shy, polite, and very, very conflict averse. We are, on the whole, trusting and naive. We are socially awkward, and hate to ask the difficult questions if it means confronting someone or calling into question their motives. This is true for us as staff; but it is also true for the hapless professors who find themselves experimenting at the age of 50-something for the first time in the world of people management.
As academics we are totally unprepared for this. After all, we spend our lives among others like us, meaning that we have never had to “toughen up” and get wise to the ways of the world and the fact that some people don’t share our basic motivational structure – i.e. to be fascinated by the world, and just want to play with ideas, debate, and explore instead of to dominate, humiliate, or hurt (why?).
Only half the problem is the existence of malevolence and evil. But the other half is that we ourselves can be too “nice” — at least, too soft, and naive, and easily manipulated by administrators whose basic purpose in life is not the one we all share (“science as a vocation”) but to make money, accumulate power, enjoy status, and exploit and humiliate those in positions of weakness.

21percent.org · 20 February 2025 at 07:37
Very interesting posting.
Academics are usually fearful.
As grad students, we worry about the approval of our supervisors. During the long postdoc or tenure track years, we are fearful of not making it, upsetting someone more powerful who may block our prospects. Once on the ladder, we are fearful of losing promotion to full professor. By the time we are secure, this timidity and acceptance of half-compromises with a rotten system has completely taken hold. The years of precarity have done their job.
There’s far too much cowardice in universities. Too many see injustices and won’t say anything about it. We’re always calculating that it’s too risky for us to stand up for somebody else. That’s the problem.
Administrators have a completely different world-view. They want to make money and enjoy power. It is truly an abusive relationship.
And nowhere more so than in Cambridge.

Eileen Nugent · 21 February 2025 at 15:32
If a university really wants to test its leadership, this is the test.

monkey needs a hug · 22 February 2025 at 14:14
teddy also naughty
if teddy white bear too

Eileen Nugent · 19 February 2025 at 19:11
I would not apply for a Head of house position without understanding the issues at play in the regulation of education-related and work-related stress. Multiple college governance structures have collapsed trying to update their safeguarding processes. This is advice I would give to anyone considering applying for this type of position going forward.
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Eileen Nugent · 19 February 2025 at 19:22
Anyone already in one of these positions, it is time to start understanding the legal obligations that are evolving with respect to these issues. When governance structures fail whilst updating safeguarding processes they really fail, Christchurch college Oxford – 4 years, £6 million – complete governance break down after which they still had to do all the work to make the required changes.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0dg2ygc
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Eileen Nugent · 19 February 2025 at 19:34
I think heads of house are under intense pressure and having organisations with processes in place that effective regulate stress for individuals would protect them and the whole organisation from burnout during times of shifting external organisational stressors e.g. brexit, pandemic.
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21percent.org · 19 February 2025 at 15:20
Wow! Only crazy person are always thinking about “their legacy”
You do the best you can, whether in research, teaching or administration. Done honestly and with spirit, that’s enough.
Anyone wanting to “do something bold to secure his legacy in the history of the university” is either foolish or dangerous.
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grapevine · 19 February 2025 at 16:20
Ironically he probably has done so, simply not in the way that he intended
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21percent.org · 19 February 2025 at 17:07
😉
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