UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) is the United Kingdom’s main public funding body for research and innovation. It was established in April 2018 and is sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
All is not well.
An internal staff survey conducted in 2024 revealed that 7% of UKRI employees reported experiencing bullying or harassment. UKRI’s outgoing chief executive, Ottoline Leyser, acknowledged this as “unacceptable“.
Now comes news of where the problems lie.
“Complaints made over the conduct of several HR staff at UK Research and Innovation have been upheld following a long investigation into bullying at the national funding agency. According to multiple sources, well over 50 UKRI employees—including other HR staff—came forward with evidence under an investigation launched more than a year ago.” (Research Professional News)
A major surprise… well, actually, not at all.
HR departments are the perfect breeding ground for bullies. HR knows exactly how to say things to not make bullying obvious, how to subtly narrow in on a victim, slowly picking at them until they crack. HR often breaks morale, silences victims and pushes out talented or compassionate people, while brashly asserting that it is others who are responsible for “the toxicity“.
One source said: “The organisation is being blighted by toxic bullying. “It’s gaslighting, it’s aggressive, it’s trying to destroy people’s careers,” they said, describing the bullying as “relentless”. People who gave evidence to the investigation said they witnessed or experienced behaviours including sexist comments, ridiculing, verbal abuse, deliberate undermining, belittling, isolation and exclusion.
One source said: “These individuals have very much caused hostile work environments in different ways across the organisation. “This is so widespread and toxic, and so many people know about it, but it is sort of unspoken,” they added. (Research Professional News)
Initially, the matter was investigated under UKRI’s whistleblowing policy. This is appropriate if the matter concerned the health and safety of employees. Suspiciously, the terms of the investigation were changed in summer 2024 to become aligned with the grievance process (which in general gives less protection to complainants). Still, an independent review has concluded that serious HR bullying took place and individuals have left the organisation.
Let us compare UKRI with Cambridge University, The first big stand-out is that UKRI conceded a bullying problem when only 7% of employees reported experiencing it. Compare that to Cambridge University, where staff surveys show that in some departments the figure is more than 40 %. A recent Guardian article laid bare the alarming scale of the problem,.Only a quarter of staff are satisfied with how their department tackles bullying and harassment,
Another big stand-out is the response of those at the top. The outgoing chair of UKRI, Ottoline Leyser, has tried to tackle the problem and has acted firmly against the bullies in HR. By contrast, those at the top of Cambridge University responded with a ho-hum “the university has introduced a new code of behaviour and updated its dignity-at-work and grievance policies” while the Pro Vice Chancellor spent his time quibbling over trivialities.
UKRI is not the only organisation in which the HR elite display a callous disregard for basic human decency.
HR = Human Repression,
Hypocrisy Resources,
Harassment & Retaliation,
Human Remains.
It’s an interesting case, thanks for highlighting it. I note from the article in Research Professional News that other, junior members of HR were amongst the victims.
I’m pleased that in the title you lay the blame at the door of the ‘HR Elite’. There are many of us in HR who are also suffering because of the way an HR department is run, because of those at the top.
There is an interesting paradox here, which is the following:
**** The more an organisation invests in Human Resources (HR), the more likely HR abuses will occur.***
Most people assume this is because toxic organisations need more HR personnel, but this is false.
HR is the cause of dysfunction because they:
1) Dilute personal responsibility;
2) Generate informational distortions.
1) When managers are left alone to make decisions, they know they are individually responsible. Even when being “naughty” they will still be sensitive to how others might judge their actions, making them more liable to fix mistakes they made in the past.
Alas, the involvement HR destroys responsibility. Managers tolerate failures instead of fixing them – effectively, because managers become “bystanders” in their own teams (the “bystander effect”).
2) HR advise decisions not based on “ground facts” but the distorted (self serving) presentation from managers. This leads to abusive decisions, which no manager would take if it were their own conscience alone as their guide.
Note that 1) and 2) are true even with HR personnel who possess the best intentions – this is a systemic failure that is inevitable once HR are allowed to guide decision-making.
Excellent points
The dilution of personal responsibility is very real. It’s impossible to get anyone to take responsibility for a bad call. HR say they merely advise, the ultimate decision rests with the manager (like Head of School). The manager says he acted in good faith on advice received from HR.
A related problem is the HR Death Spiral
https://21percent.org/?p=1020
First, the larger the HR department, the worse the academic staff are treated.
Second, the worse the academic staff are treated, the more problems end up on HR’s desk
Third, the more problems, the louder the cries for more HR staff to deal with the increased workload
HR is like Parkinson’s Law applied to Social Workers by Sir Humphrey’s famous quote from Yes Minister:
“social problems increase to occupy the total number of social workers available to deal with them”
This is a spiral of death of the managerial university where there is no accountability
Its exactly the same for legal services – the more they are involved, the more crimes occur.
Most managers do not really know the law, but actually that makes them veer on the side of caution (why take the risk) as well as try to follow basic ethical norms (what is the “right” thing to do?)
Yet once an organization puts legal advisors in there, they fuck that whole situation. Ethics and caution are thrown to the wind, as lawyers provide a “false confidence” around conduct of deceitful, unethical, and ultimately illegal acts, that no decent person would ever have contemplated doing if it were their responsibility alone.
And then on top, add the culture of the total institute, as Goffman has described, you have a recipe for human rights abuse.
Absolutely true. It is the same as the famous road sign experiment
https://bigthink.com/the-present/want-less-car-accidents-get-rid-of-traffic-signals-road-signs/
Basically once you remove road signs, the number of accidents goes down not up – because uncertainty makes drivers stay alert and make use of common sense
Same with HR and legal services, take them out and decency, moral rightneousness, duty and integrity can return.
Vice Chancellors have little actual power, they need to build alliances among the Senior Management to get anything done
The HR Director has much more actual power. He or she can start an investigation into you on the flimsiest of grounds, lasting for many years. He or she can destroy you and your career
There is little to constrain an incompetent or unethical HR Director.
They can truly destroy an organisation from the inside.
“an incompetent or unethical HR Director… can truly destroy an organisation from the inside”
Or deputy director… just sayin’ 😉
Parasitoid wasps are a large and diverse group of insects within the order Hymenoptera.
Unlike predators that kill prey outright, parasitoid wasps lay their eggs in or on other insects, and their larvae slowly consume the host, eventually killing it
The host dies as the larvae feed on its internal organs and tissues.
We are being eaten from within.
The larvae are senior management, heads of schools, bullying academics, and HR & Legal.
One of the functions of certain parasitoid wasp species is ‘mind control’ through injecting venom that alters and manipulates the host’s behavior.
Most in the universities are twitching to the tune of parasitic wasps found among the university’s top ranks, but don’t want to admit it.
by definition they are all parasitic (HR, legal, management)
we generate the “honey” by providing education and skills, donations and grants, knowledge and research innovation
they don’t do anything – only leech erode destroy whatever they can
Like the wasp that injects its eggs into a living host, management implants layer after layer of bureaucracy into the body of the university, not to support its health, but to feed off its vitality.
The university was once thriving with research, curiosity, and collaborative spirit. Now it spends its days writhing under layers of compliance, metrics, audits, HR programs, and strategic initiatives that nourish nothing but the managerial offspring.
Just as the parasitic larva grows fat off the host’s lifeblood, so too do layers of administration swell, their salaries bloating while the limbs of departments atrophy. The academics, researchers and educators, are kept just alive enough to function, publish, and bring in grants, never quite dead, never quite free.
Eventually, when the host is no longer useful, when the budget is tight, morale is low, and reputation is squeezed dry, management does not die with it. Like wasps bursting from a hollowed caterpillar, they emerge untouched, ready to infest another institution with buzzwords, branding, and “vision statements” and “transformation programs” that mean nothing.
The managerial parasitic wasp is merely the better-known representative species of the order, but in reality, such parasitoid behaviour is also to be found not infrequently among many academic bullies themselves who similarly take over entire departments with venomous mind control.
Haha woah dark stuff – what’s up with biologists at Cambridge? haha
guess you’d almost be forgiven for thinking there had allegedly been some kind of multi year scandal of bullying and legal retaliation against one of the university’s most senior respected biologists and her lab resulting in a humiliating climbdown last year as fecal remains were sprayed over a whole panoply of legal advisors and HR nobodies who for some reason haven’t yet been fired and/or locked up in Rikers Island where they belong frankly imho
This is from public domain records:, Bury St Edmunds Tribunal, 13 November 2024
Hearing Date Case No. Jurisdiction(s) Claimant v Respondent(s) Time
13 November 2024 3312493/2023 UDL, PID, RRD, WA. Mr J Valerio Stone west versus R.H. Bodyworks, Suffolk 10:00
13 November 2024 2302625/2024 UDL, BOC A H Brand, Cambridge versus The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge, Cambridge 10:00
13 November 2024 3311689/2023 UDL, PID Mr D Boker, Sudbury versus TJ Evers Limited, Essex 10:00
As you say, another horrific beating for Cambridge University HR/Legal.
Some mules, no matter how hard and often they are beaten, never ever learn.
Spot on, except …
“some kind of multi year scandal of bullying and legal retaliation against one of the university’s most senior respected biologists and her lab”
… this has happened to multiple labs, not just the one you mention.
HR was massively expanded, some poor hires were made, and we are where we are … a deficit and sliding down the rankings with no sign anyone in the senior management cares enough.
Right that’s the thing. Multiple labs and a huge number of people, once you count the postdocs, early careers etc and not just the professors who were PIs.
Letting each case spin out means now everyone knows about all of the cases so the ones still unresolved all know about the biology cases and know about cancer research and now have begun digging up all the other cases from previous years in other departments across the university which the powers that be thought they had managed to bury at the time forever.
Now it just accumulates. more and more like they’ve created this big traumatic collective memory of bullying and harassment that now will simply never fade away until the whole pattern of abuse comes to an end for good.
Let’s not forget the physical sciences as well. There’s been a series of monumental HR fuck-ups in Physics, Chemistry and Astronomy. No sign that anyone in the School appreciates the colossal scale of the damage.
Bloody right! Time to rip out the people processes and give some overdue organizational feedback!
Social sciences and humanities too
Eventually, names of perps are going to end up on this site and others.
The people who should certainly be named are those who fail to act with integrity and who flout the rules (whether Statutes/Ordinances or Dignity at Work)
There is, or should be, a code of behaviour tempered by robustness and sense. This includes not letting anyone or anything interfere with one’s integrity.
There is no such code of behaviour among the principal actors in the HR & Legal departments in Cambridge University. They lie for each other, they cover up for each other, they cheat and they dissemble.
This has infected some of the Heads of School and Pro Vice Chancellors either because they have failed to recognise the bad actors or they think such behaviour is acceptable.
Not just HR, is it? When known academic bullies get elected as deputy chairs of a REF UoA, what kind of faith are you supposed to have in the UKRI as a whole?
[…] Bullying derives from power differences. Those holding powerful administrative position and the Human Resources elite are very often the worst perpetrators of […]