There’s been a spectacular smash-up by the Human Resources department at the University of Edinburgh. The recent case involving Professor Roya Sheikholeslami and the University concluded with an emphatic ruling in her favour and a huge award.
After a protracted legal battle spanning over a decade, an employment tribunal awarded Prof Sheikholeslami more than £1 million, determining that she was unfairly dismissed by the university in 2012. She joined the University of Edinburgh in May 2007 as a professor of chemical process engineering. She was provided with a substantial start-up package, including funds for laboratory refurbishment. However, delays in the refurbishment process hindered her research activities. In 2010, she took a leave of absence due to work-related stress and depression. Two years later, she was dismissed.
The tribunal found that the university repeatedly failed to follow proper procedures, including:
- Unfair Dismissal: The university did not support Professor Sheikholeslami in renewing her work permit and failed to explore reasonable alternatives before terminating her employment.
- Victimisation: She was victimised for raising concerns about gender discrimination within the School of Engineering at Edinburgh University. Some male Professors thought she was appointed “because she was a women, not because she was good enough”. They then viewed her as a troublemaker for raising discrimination claims.
- Disability Discrimination: The university mishandled her sickness absence and did not provide appropriate accommodations for her disability.
The tribunal awarded her £1,145,216.26, which included compensation for past and future loss, interest and a procedural uplift for repeated violations of ACAS codes of best practice.
There is familiar catalogue of University HR failures listed here . Anyone who has had any dealings with their University HR department will not be surprised — they include
- failure to follow university processes,
- failure to follow ACAS guidelines (which can cause a 25% uplift in damages),
- failure to show support and empathy during the process,
- repeated miscommunications,
- failure to investigate some grievances at all, dismissing them without investigation.
How much did this cost the University?
The payout was £1.1m. But the real cost was far greater. It was a costly 10 year legal fight during which Edinburgh University was represented by a barrister (David Reade KC) instructed by solicitors (Robin Turnbull of Anderson Strathern). There are also the wages of the internal university staff in Edinburgh University’s own HR and legal departments, who will have worked on this case for more than a decade. And there is the lost opportunity cost of members of the department not getting grants or doing productive work for 10 yrs. The highest costs are often the missed opportunity costs that can’t be quantified or compensated. They affect both personal outcomes and broader societal ones.
At a conservative estimate, the true cost of this train wreck must be at least £3m.
A University of Edinburgh spokesperson said: “While we respect the judgment, we do not comment on individual cases and won’t provide a further statement on the matter.”
Did anyone take responsibility for this crash? Edinburgh has an “HR Senior Leadership Team, which oversees the People Strategy and People Plan, includes the HR Director, four HR Deputy Directors and the Director of HR Services.” Did the well-paid Director of HR resign because of repeated failures of his staff whom he had failed to train properly? Did anyone in the School of Engineering — which incredibly has an Athena SWAN award — face disciplinary action for gender discrimination?
Shakespeare Martineau (to whom this must have come as no surprise as they are Cambridge University’s lawyers) commented here that universities should “use this as a cautionary tale to review their own grievance procedures.”
Most universities have a huge problem with their HR departments. Their employment practices would embarrass most of the public or private sector. The legal consequences each year run into many millions.
9 Comments
ProfPlum · 29 April 2025 at 22:47
A remarkable victory for Prof Sheikholeslami
So, the problems started around 2008 and the court case ended in 2025. An astonishing 17 years fighting Edinburgh University … and eventually winning.
I pay tribute to the resilience of Prof Sheikholeslami
Worth recalling that the HR Director, four HR Deputy Directors and the Director of HR Services will all be on substantial salaries.
Eileen Nugent · 29 April 2025 at 23:09
I agree ProfPlum, Prof Sheikholeslami has done those still in academia a service by pushing back against egregious employment practices – long drawn out unresolved employment disputes – that induce ill health & then continuously degrade health. Took resilience to keep going for over 1/3 a whole working life span, imagine the difficult challenges that still need to be solved in engineering that such resilience could have been applied to had the dispute been resolved earlier, instead individual resilience is spent on trying to get a university to behave itself.
ProfPlum · 30 April 2025 at 07:03
Very well put. Apart from the lawyers involved, no-one else has benefitted.
Prof Sheikholeslami’s talents and tenacity over 1/3 of her working life should have been put to use in chemical process engineering for her benefit, the University’s benefit and societal benefit.
Why did the University keep fighting for so long?
The Vice Chancellor of Edinburgh Uni is always in the media telling us the university has financial problems — no wonder!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8gzd6n1g7o
Eileen Nugent · 29 April 2025 at 22:48
A problem can be fixed without a grievance policy, a situation can be remedied without a process. If they don’t want to fix a problem, no policy or process is going will make difference. The attitude in academia is very much – why bother fixing any problem – when you could get a new person in to wear them down in the exact same way and go through the exact same process again and again, management in academia are turning themselves into Sisyphus repeatedly rolling rocks up the hill – building up academic careers – only for the rocks to be let roll back down again – academic career destroyed by organisational fault in university.
Shakespeare Martineau can offer the same generic quote law firms typically offer in such cases, if the organisations don’t want to fix problems developing newer and more complex grievance policies is a waste of public resources that won’t address the real problem. There is no will to solve any problem in universities & that suits the law firms because they can continue to hoover up significant amounts of public funding meant for higher education and live off the dysfunction their deficiencies – in evolving their legal dispute resolution skills to respond to a shifting legal landscape in higher education – are making a significant contribution to.
Anonymous · 30 April 2025 at 22:14
This is certainly a landmark case, and more major cases will be heard in the Employment Tribunals system this year and next, against other institutions. I do wonder though, why this case took so long to process? Waiting lists for ETs are currently around 2 years.
It cannot be stressed enough the extent to which HR and senior management will avoid admitting that they got something wrong, regardless of the circumstances or evidence presented to them, and no matter how easily the situation could have been diffused early on.
Also, in my experience, any existing grievance procedures are not necessarily the problem, but rather HR and senior management *actively choosing* to ignore or abuse them, and when reasonable alternative courses of action exist. In these situations they simply cannot blame the ‘system’.
Any grievance procedures that may be in place are there not to deal with or prevent genuine cases of bullying etc, but are there purely as a means for HR/management to abuse and get rid of staff that have somehow ended up on their hit list, usually for speaking out. If the staff member dares to speak out against HR/management specifically (no matter how minor the issue), then the punishment is even more brutal, and they will not think twice about wasting tremendous amounts of financial resources to secure your extraction from the organisation, simply because they can (in this sense, the ensuing campaign against you is just as much a depraved ego trip for those responsible, than anything else).
Another major part of the problem is that the moment the University lawyers enter to equation, the process will most certainly escalate all the way to an ET and beyond (why would they turn off this infinite tap of money from a rich client by formulating a solution to the problem at an early stage?). Instead, they will (all too easily) convince their clients that they have ‘nothing to worry about’ as the complainant ‘has no case at all’, even when it is blatantly obvious that they do. They won’t care if the University loses, as they will still get paid. It is a major scandal that public funds are being misused in this way.
I fear that this catastrophically toxic situation is now irrecoverable, especially for those organisations in the most financial trouble, unless there are many more successful cases like this one (along with the press exposure that would follow).
21percent.org · 1 May 2025 at 12:01
Many astute points that coincide with our thinking
“ I do wonder though, why this case took so long to process? Waiting lists for ETs are currently around 2 years.”
As you say, the main beneficiaries are usually lawyers, so the answer no doubt is that they’re happy to raise innumerable objections.
“They won’t care if the University loses, as they will still get paid. It is a major scandal that public funds are being misused in this way.”
Indeed. It is a major scandal across the HE sector, though there are signs that some journalists are now becoming aware of what is happening.
Anon · 1 May 2025 at 19:23
Kent ?
Xerxes · 1 May 2025 at 22:22
It is remarkable that Edinburgh University has all these Athena SWAN awards. Incredibly, the School of Engineering has an Athena SWAN Bronze Award achieved in September 2013. This is right in the middle of this huge scandal & the terrible mistreatment of Prof Sheikholeslami.
What was in the Athena SWAN application? Was it truthful? Did the School of Engineering mention the allegations of misogyny by the two female Professors of Engineering, and the ongoing grievance of Prof Sheikholeslami?
A real problem with Athena SWAN is that it’s easy to game. Departments just write down what they know Athena SWAN want to read. They make no effort to tell the truth.
21percent.org · 2 May 2025 at 09:29
A department at Cambridge University was busy applying for these kinds of awards under the signature of a Head of Department who was being investigated for misogynistic bullying. This was already highly inappropriate. The application form for the award contained material that was incorrect.
Institutions often manipulate or exaggerate their efforts to achieve the Athena SWAN charter to gain a higher award level (Bronze, Silver, or Gold). This undermines the integrity of the framework. EDI or HR professionals are sometimes complicit in this manipulation.