In January 2024, Cambridge University carried out a Staff Culture Survey. All academics, professional service staff, researchers and technical support were canvassed and invited to respond to questions on work-life balance, bullying, discrimination, mental health and flexible working
There has been no official communication on the results from this survey, now a year old. The Times Higher Education has recently reported partial results here.
The University deserves credit for embarking on this attempt to understand its culture. However, the long delay in making the results public already suggests that the survey generated some uncomfortable findings. This is not uncommon. Those at the top of an organisation often have a very rose-tinted view of what is actually happening on the ground.
We will provide average results for the whole university in this blog posting, obtained from a Freedom of Information request.
I am satisfied with how bullying and harassment are addressed in my department … 27 %
My mental health and well-being are supported in my department … 52%
I feel confident asking for mental health and/or well-being support at work … 45%
Curiously, the survey did not ask the obvious question: Have you experienced any bullying or harassment over the last 12 months? Instead, it asked the weaker question: Are you satisfied with how bullying and harassment are addressed in your department?
Even so, the result is miserable. The university claims that “there is no place for bullying, harassment, discrimination and victimisation”. Zero tolerance means that that everyone should at least be content with how bullying is being handled, even if it’s not possible to eliminate all bullying. The answer should be be 100% … not 27%.
In fact, there are many tens of departments in which 40% to 50% of respondents explicitly disagreed with the statement “I am satisfied with how bullying and harassment are addressed”. It seems that there are a number of problematic departments and institutes in which bullying and harassment has become entrenched and normalised. The 21 Group urges the University to put these departments into immediate special measures. This must include removing the failing or abusive Heads of Department and Heads of School, as well as reforming the departmental management and human resources structures. Changes are needed at the top.
The results on mental health are also very troubling. Only just over half of those who responded felt that their mental health is supported. Even worse, only 45% felt comfortable in asking for support. Workplace bullying is one of the leading drivers of mental distress, as are unrealistic workloads, job insecurity and lack of support or understanding from management.
The 21 Group is not surprised. We know of one Head of Department who responded to concerns that a member of staff was in mental distress with the statement “The Department does not have the capacity or bandwidth to deal with a mentally unstable woman”. (This is likely a breach of the Equality Act as direct disability discrimination, as well as being exceptionally uncaring).
I would recommend my part of the University as a great place to work … 57%
I believe action will be taken on the results of this survey … 27%
This is just grim.
Given the enormous advantages of Cambridge University — its beautiful surroundings and buildings, its inspirational history, its excellence in research and teaching as exemplified by many highly creative individuals, its huge endowment which can be used to support its core mission — only 57% can recommend the University as a great place to work. Barely more than half. Shameful.
And only 27% think action will be taken as a result of the survey. Well, at least that’s realistic. After all, you’re reading the results on a blog, not as part of an official mea culpa by University senior management.
The Vice Chancellor should make an immediate statement on what actions the university proposes to take to address the serious issues uncovered by the Staff Culture Survey.
20 Comments
21percent.org · 13 March 2025 at 07:57
As soon as term has ended, the 21 Group will follow this up with our own statistical analysis of the data provided by the survey.
We will name some of the failing departments. This is to ensure that there is pressure on those department heads to instigate reforms.
We note that the Head of Department who made the statement “The Department does not have the capacity or bandwidth to deal with this mentally unstable woman” has now been removed — though not after endless prevarications by the Head of School (who sadly remains in place as a major blockage to reform. He should by now have resigned).
JennyWren · 13 March 2025 at 08:34
Is this ‘Team Teddy Bear’? Or ‘Team Concerned Brow’?
InOldSchools · 14 March 2025 at 00:19
There’s no difference
Teddy Bear and Concerned Brow lie for each other, cover up for each other, cheat for each other
They’re two halves of the same rancid backside
Anon · 13 March 2025 at 13:41
27% satisfaction with how bullying and harassment are addressed in the department is shocking. But then even more shocking that they have apparently taken no action one year later or bothered with a follow up survey.
Anonymous · 13 March 2025 at 17:55
Of the two I’d say the 27% figure is more shocking but point taken
the lack of action is bad
which does go to show that staff had the right idea in believing that
“only 27% think action will be taken as a result of the survey”
Engineer · 13 March 2025 at 17:07
Looking forward to the statistical analysis of the data.
Also thanks for sharing the official bullying policy of the university, I never knew that we had one. But the way that it is written is greatly out of touch with the experiences of staff. They seem to think academic bullying is a matter of talking loudly or aggressively. It is not. Staff experiences of bullying (especially for early careers) is much more a matter of gaslighting, obstruction, and the subtle yet constant attempts by some insecure heads of department to manipulate and undermine those under their control.
HellyR · 13 March 2025 at 22:28
What is offensive is that they knew this was the real story, but still after one year they were planning to put out a BS self promotion story about “98%” of staff saying they were satisfied and thriving in their roles (based on what actual data?)
Presumably they have scrapped that now that staff have access to the real data, but whoever was planning a whitewash exercise should be hounded out of the university…
Anon · 14 March 2025 at 08:43
There’s a lady professor of psychology at the helm, dishing out advice on how to flourish when staff are bullied, mistreated and in fear of widespread harassment and psychological torment by psychopathic HR.
Meanwhile teddy bears and concerned brows have tossed out the history books and school calculators to join in on the re-writing of facts and the fudging of numbers.
Heads of Psychiatry provide “responsible” judgement on the carnage caused by psychotic rewriting of realities.
Professors sign away their careers, allowing prose defying logic, sense and justice to be propagated in their own names.
How is the parody set to continue? A scripted piece of poetry from the law faculty?
No, oh no, breaking the law,
how could we, why would we,
we wouldn’t know how…
ProfPlum · 14 March 2025 at 10:33
University management is really a branch of politics.
There’s a constant battle to maintain a positive image, often at the expense of truth and integrity. The webpages or social media strategies are mainly tools for the manipulation of media and public perception. What is written or presented in public bares little relation to what actually happens on the ground.
The VC is a willing participant in this distortion.
The environment is constantly tense, with crises management and disaster prevention. Everything seems to be on the brink of collapse, with senior managers making ill-considered decisions that then cause more problems that require fixing two or three years down the line.
The main players are often incompetent, self-serving, or completely out of their depth. They often have so little background in teaching and research that they don’t understand the university’s core mission. They simply thrive on the backstabbing and petty university power politics.
Their world is a labyrinth of bureaucracy, meaningless meetings and policy statements. Decisions are made for the sake of appearances rather than substance, and there’s a pervasive sense that the whole system is more interested in optics than actual good governance.
When the university does actually make a public pronouncement on its Culture Survey, everything will be spun for the best possible advantage. There is no sense that the survey is providing us with data that is telling us about real problems in our university that we urgently need to fix.
Double Helix · 14 March 2025 at 12:06
There is absolutely no accountability or responsibility.
The whole system is just this meat grinder that extermalizes pain on to the most vulnerable who are least able to contest or resist excessive teaching demands, underpayment of wages, or theft of grant and other resources (so our postdocs, junior staff, research associates)
When concerns are raised there is no one there is listen and no one empowered to make changes. Indeed everyone has the incentive to pass the potato to someone else, ignore requests for intervention, refuse to uphold basic rules and principles of fairness or integrity.
The survey shows that they know all of this and they simple do not care. But after years of decay we have finally reached the breaking point and they surely know that too.
21percent.org · 14 March 2025 at 12:53
Agreed. Postdocs, junior staff & research associates are often victims. In fact, anyone on a fixed term contract (66% of the university) is very vulnerable, as are graduate students
If universities wanted to protect these groups of people, they could. They do not want to do this.
Well, ok, that is a harsh lesson in life. They don’t care.
The really objectionable part is not that they don’t care … it’s that they want us to all believe in an elaborate fairy tale that they do really care.
Eileen Nugent · 14 March 2025 at 13:42
They have gone for too complex a strategy to try to improve the lives of those in the organisation. Instead of just focussing on optimising the learning and working conditions for every individual to reduce the amounts of unnecessary stress they are generating for everyone they have gone for defining every single macro and micro aggression known to humankind and trying to police every single individual for every single one of them all the time which has then increased the amounts of unnecessary stress in the organisation to unsustainable levels. I think they genuinely do want to care but that the complex strategy has driven the whole organisation so insane that it is no longer capable of caring for anyone never-mind meeting the basic level of care required to fulfil its legal obligations to individuals in the organisation.
Eileen Nugent · 14 March 2025 at 14:30
They can try to externalise all the organisational pain but from this point forward all “externalisation” of pain pathways will significantly amplify any organisational pain they are attempting to externalise and direct it right back to the organisation generating the pain. The organisational will find all external parties extremely resistant to any further attempts to dump the unnecessary stress of any unsolved internal problems on them. Obstruct any member of Regent House from carrying out urgent governance duties on behalf of the whole of Regent House and that is how it ends. The only return for putting up with serious mental abuse seems to be even more serious mental abuse, no one has to put up with this never-ending cascade of ever-increasing mental abuse in their lives.
Eileen Nugent · 14 March 2025 at 11:41
There is a serious problem with the management of operational risk – legal, HR, health and safety – because new legal obligations to regulate work-related stress have been introduced which mean that the current system of handling serious employment disputes – leaving a system of employment in place that frequently generates serious employment disputes that the organisation is unwilling or unable to resolve internally – is now untenable. That is now classified as an organisational health and safety risk [generation of significant amounts of unnecessary work-related stress at the level of the organisation] that needs to be minimised. Significant changes are now needed to bring the system of employment into a state of compliance with these new health and safety legal obligations on the regulation of work-related stress in order to minimise the health and safety risk and risk of a preventable work-related stress death in the organisation.
Eileen Nugent · 14 March 2025 at 11:57
Division of work-related stress = rawest, purest, form of organisational politics that exists.
Playing power politics as individuals = increasing the amounts of unnecessary stress in the organisation = increasing organisational health and safety risk = whole organisation goes down together
It is necessary for individuals to stop playing power politics and to work together to fix this specific problem.
Fail as individuals engaging in power politics generating lots of unnecessary stress for each other or succeed as a group working together to minimise unnecessary stress generated for each other. There is no intermediate state, it’s a pass/fail exam – high pass/fail threshold – no exam resits – the type of test students in Cambridge are routinely exposed to.
Laoshi · 15 March 2025 at 09:37
The “27%” who said they were “satisfied with how bullying and harassment are addressed in their department” are probably the ones who are doing the bullying / harassment
21percent.org · 15 March 2025 at 11:52
🙂
It’s a very curious question to ask, rather than the more direct have you experienced or witnessed bullying?
infinite loop · 16 March 2025 at 13:39
you say this as a joke but it is probably true. of those 27% who are “satisfied” with the university’s policy of ignoring staff bullying, a fair share would be the bullies themselves.
21percent.org · 16 March 2025 at 15:44
Agreed.
Also, many did not fill out the staff survey form, as it wasn’t anonymous — everyone had a unique link. Many victims, who worried about further retaliation, did not complete it.
Bullies had nothing to worry about, so they are probably over-represented amongst those who completed the survey.
Career Opportunities, the ones that never knock - 21percent.org · 16 March 2025 at 16:54
[…] Staff Culture Survey at Cambridge University is not just restricted to bullying and harassment, prevalent though these […]