A brief post to show that the blog is hitting new heights.
The blue line is the chart of visitors to the 21 Group blog site (sessions per month versus date). Each of these sessions has on average 3-5 page views. The red line is three-month rolling average.
It’s very encouraging that visits are increasing so rapidly. It suggests that the blog is providing a new space for discussion of some serious problems afflicting the UK Universities.
We recommend using a VPN when commenting. For those universities who monitor social media, please note that the 21 Group will never divulge any information about posters to third parties.
If you wish to submit a contribution for publication on the blog, please use [email protected].
Many thanks to everyone who looks at the blog and comments. The 21 Group has learnt a lot from the comments.
Certainly, at Cambridge University, any internal posts on Yammer etc that are at all critical of the administration are quickly removed. While the VC blathers endlessly about freedom of speech, her organisation behaves as though it is run by Erich Fritz Emil Mielke.
Some universities (eg Lancaster) are known to monitor social media. It would not surprise me if the 21 Group blog is monitored regularly by Cambridge HR or the relevant proVCs
Keep up the good work, 21 Group.
“It would not surprise me if the 21 Group blog is monitored regularly by Cambridge HR or the relevant proVCs”
It definitely is, but that only makes it more fun!
The 21 Group was launched on 1 November 2023, right? We should celebrate the anniversary and send a piece of cake to HR and other relevant senior managers and thank them for their rich behaviours that foster engaging conversations in this blog.
Oh, it’s monitored alright. Here’s an email from last year, thrown up under DSAR.
“Hi everyone, [Whole Bunch of Senior Administrators]
This morning’s latest from Wyn on his website. This is a comment he has published in the comments section of his blog. Some of the other comments are equally as offensive. Perhaps an example for the discussion with the Chair of the BoS?
I’ve copy-pasted the text below for ease of reference.
“look at the pathetically lame quality of what these “experts” are producing
starting with the “people strategy” document
It is an embarrassment. Pretty smiley pictures but not one single
1 – key performance indicator or metric of any kind
2 – numerical targets or goals (achieve X by date Y)
3 – implementation timeline
Nothing that can be quantified, nothing that can be held accountable.
No individual in charge, no plan, basically total bullshit from start to finish
It is all about avoiding accountability and doing nothing while Rome burns
If our students submitted something this crap as their final assignment, we would fail them for the degree”
The full article can be found here: The Chief People Officer, the Architect of Spin – 21percent.org
Kind regards,”
[A Senior Administrator]
BoS refers to the Board of Scrutiny. This seems to be evidence of attempts to interfere with the processes of democratic scrutiny of Cambridge University.
Oh, they got offended. How did you dare saying these unkind words? You were lucky you were not investigated for such cruelty because you clearly crossed the line…
As the 21 Group knows, I was told that this tale (https://21percent.org/?p=2478) can be taken into account in the investigation that the university is doing against me for alleged abusive behaviour against hundreds of university staff. As if the outcome of that investigation was not yet known! Of course, I explained that the animals and events of the story were fictitious and that any resemblance to actual events or real persons is purely coincidental, but the fact they came to me asking about that story was rather epic. Not clear why they got upset, after all, it is just a tale!
“… for alleged abusive behaviour against hundreds of university staff.” 😉
Ludicrous. They know the game is up.
You would be surprised to know how many people know about that investigation and do not find it ludicrous! Indeed, I should have added that I was told that the police could be informed to discuss my “crimes.” As I write this text, the police can arrive at any moment… These can be my last words!
We know of an ongoing case where this has indeed happened
A UK University made a bogus police compliant against a Whistleblower.
It’s another case of which the press are aware.
If the police knocks on my door, you will all be the first to know. But please, do not tell the university as otherwise I will be in real troubles!
Funny thing is, if you take out the tone and focus on the content that comment was in fact very constructive. If a prof said that in their comments to an essay sure it might lead to a bad initial reaction but the substantive feedback is all there. Add performance indicators, goals and a target implementation time line. That is great insight and I find it sad that HR reacted the way they did. But then I guess that is why they never did well at school and had to get jobs in HR instead.
“I guess that is why they never did well at school and had to get jobs in HR instead”
That is perhaps harsh. I trust they did very well in acting classes.
Agreed.
The poster (who goes by the name of ‘Straight Outta Hixton’) makes perfectly reasonable criticisms, albeit expressed a bit breezily (but fine for a blog)
The People Strategy document articulates intentions but not outcomes — it lacks the metrics, goals, and timelines necessary for execution, evaluation and accountability. Now perhaps these exist elsewhere, but they should be publicly accessible.
Once upon a time when there were more informal meetings over coffee or sideline chats about the strategy, people would say things that were much harsher than this but provided frank and useful reactions to where things were going wrong. Now it takes place more online and that is fine. If anything I would say the tone of the comments here are often quite moderate by comparison.
Ultimately what is bizarre about their email is the degree of jealousy and insecurity behind their reaction. Why contact BOS to complain? The points made are entirely valid and they could easily have asked for feedback. For example what kinds of targets, why are people unhappy, how we would we do it differently, and so on and so forth.
I hate to sound harsh but I suspect the comment hit a nerve because deep down, they know it touches on a point of truth, and is something they are unwilling to address: i.e. that morale is low, that many feel disrespected by the closed off nature of the central administration and decision-making, and are saddened that the hopes of a people strategy that would address the real issues (and bring in best practice from other universities worldwide) have been disappointed.
I doubt university HR and the key leadership of UCam were “saddened” in this case or others discussed in this blog. They know exactly what they are doing. They are concerned that an increasing number of people are tired of this toxic environment and the consequences of that sentiment. They are particularly concerned by the fact that the 21 Group is aware of many scandals, from different Departments and Schools, and that for the first time they do not have the monopoly of information on misconduct, regardless of how they try to enforce confidentiality.
I would be curious to know the subtext of all this. It is actually a good thing if they did refer the comment to the board of scrutiny president because they then could action the request no? (As I recall that was to investigate how much money was spent producing such glossy documents? And did they do so?)
We all need to watch out! The American Queen and her oligarchy friends have Wyn Evans on their sights! They will destroy him if they can! June 2026 is a long time away…
That is true. But Wyn is not alone. I really trust that people who read/contribute to this blog and were helped by him would stand by him if the university tried some (even more) shameful. I think they know that if they try that, it could have unpredicted consequences. They will have to put up with him like it or not…
I am amazed at how much restraint this group has shown by complying with confidentiality for two whole years. If they strike the beehive that will see scores of people stung by one case or another once the cascade comes out and their complicity is revealed.
Bloody right, bloody well said !
Thank you for this! It really helps to show how delusional they are. The way they discuss it is as if the comments of staff are all the work of one individual, not the hundreds who endorsed Wyn’s candidacy, the 3700 staff and alumni who voted for an outsider with an anti-bullying platform, and the thousands who continue to follow and contribute to this blog each month.
Most Universities are now monitoring this blog. Always use a VPN and be careful about what you decide to disclose.
I had yammer posts and my yammer account removed by Cambridge University in 2023. It was an awkward situation, generated a pattern of abnormal work-related stressors and was like being crushed in fault zone at the boundary between some employment tectonic plates.
One employment convention at work in universities is that an employment grievance is considered a private interest contractual dispute between an organisation and an individual. Any information relating to an employment dispute/grievance is considered confidential information and not the type of information that it is suitable to post on an internal channel like Yammer – which functions like an internal public channel in an organisation. Up until the introduction of work-related stress regulation the convention in organisations was that every individual had access to a set of functional grievance processes that were capable of correcting any organisational employment error. Should those organisational grievance processes fail to correct any error the individual had access to a public channel ending in an employment tribunal that could catch and correct any residual organisational employment error.
It was therefore deemed appropriate for an organisation to enforce rules where all individuals were asked to refrain from sharing information relating to any employment disputes/grievance on internal public channels like yammer as there was an appropriate public channel for the case to go down at the end of which was an employment tribunal. If the case got to the end of that channel – employment tribunal – all information would then be put in the public domain having gone through increasing levels of scrutiny as the case progressed through the public channel. This was the lens through which all organisations viewed all employment matters and also by extension all forms of whistleblowing which were considered to be an employment matter and hence suitable to be let go down the same public channel available to an individual as employment grievances. This meant that anything critical of the administration of an organisation that was connected to employment and/or whistleblowing was deemed inappropriate for posting on internal public channels like Yammer.
A second convention at work in universities is the separation of operational problems and governance problems. This convention decouples those in governance roles from the problems that arise in the day-to-day operation of the university isolating those in governance roles from the unpredictable interruptions of operation problems, protecting them from being drawn into problem solving on shorter time scales and freeing them to focus on longer-term strategic planning and problem solving over longer timescales for the university. Within that organisational convention any problems that arise during the course of employment were considered operational problems and not governance problems. This way of handling employment problems was considered acceptable in organisations because there is a head of HR and Legal who could commission detailed legal advice on behalf of the university and who had the professional background to interpret that legal advice and handle any operational employment problem for the organisation. There was also a public channel that has been running for decades – one ending in an employment tribunal – which people can access should an organisation make an employment error that it was unable to correct.
A new challenge was generated for all organisations in the UK by the introduction of an explicit legal obligation to regulate work-related stress. Up until that point organisations were relying on work-related stress regulation implicit in their organisational employment practices i.e. being a fair and reasonable employer in relation to all individuals at all times, generating few employment errors and having employment error correction mechanisms in place that can correct any employment error in a mutually agreed way with few if any cases making it to an employment tribunal. There were four additional forces at a play at the time this legal obligation to regulate work-related stress was being introduced : (1) employment claims numbers were increasing and claims were becoming more complex – that was leading to an increase in the employment error rate because complex cases were putting more pressure on HR workload, this combined with the increase in complexity increased the probability of making a mistake on one of these cases (2) organisations were experiencing increased external stressors stressing the whole organisation something which was leading to an increased workloads and employment error rates. (3) State of employment tribunal system and implementation of employment law in the UK : the combination of cases taking years to reach an employment tribunal and a particular feature of UK employment law which meant that a reinstatement order after an unfair dismissal was not legally enforceable meant organisations were increasingly unwilling to correct their employment errors. Organisations were opting instead to pay financial compensation to not correct an employment error or to knowingly not comply with employment law creating an error that needed to be paid for but also removing a problematic individual from the organisation by unlawful means in the process (4) Employment conventions on workload increases, mental health and disability : some employers saw no problem with increasing workload by +25% – if mental ill health subsequently emerged some employers saw no problem in classifying the individual as disabled and either offering them reasonable adjustments of dismissing them on capability grounds and following that not acknowledging any unfair dismissal or complying with any reinstatement order after an unfair dismissal which meant that an organisation could disable a worker with unsafe increases in workload and then discard them through the organisational employment error correction processes.
The new legal obligation to regulate work-related stress is incompatible with some of the employment conventions that arose in the context of organisations having no explicit obligation to regulate work related stress. No where is that more evident than some of the organisational conventions that relate to the correction of employment errors. This meant that on its introduction it was then setting organisations up to be at an increased risk of the type of organisational work-related stress accident that it was being introduced to prevent. When that incompatibility is discovered and raised by an individual in the middle of an employment error correction process it has the potential to create new and unexpected concerns that increase the complexity of the operational problem for the organisation and then generate a pattern of abnormal stressors for the individual. What this meant was that temporarily there was a class of employment problems – grievance and/or concerns processes generating excessive amounts of stress – where the public channel which ended at the employment tribunal appeared likely to exacerbate an already serious problem – excessive work-related stress – and therefore not the public channel to enter but there was not yet an obvious alternative public channel for individual case of this type to go down – the public channel for this type of ongoing work-related stress accident case seemed not to have been built and/or tested by any individual.
This resulted in a non-ideal organisational situation where people were left with an operational problem but without any obvious public channel to take it down. A number of organisational conventions then worked against this operational problem being by appropriately handled by the organisation and a solution to it being found internally (1) separation of operational problems and governance problems i.e. those in operational roles isolate those in governance roles from operational problems by not allowing information relating to those operational problems to pass to those in governance roles and non-intervention by those in governance roles in any employment dispute they happen to become aware of as it was understood these are private disputes where individuals have a public channel to go down (2) if an individual appears not be be going through the “proper channels” when raising an operational problem the correct organisational response is assumed to be redirecting the individual to go down the “proper channels” as breaking an organisational convention for one individual cannot be justified. This response fails when there is no obvious “proper channel” to go down.
People were then left trying to find ways to avoid going down one public channel – the one ending in an employment tribunal – as it was clear that this public channel could exacerbate the problem – unregulated work-related stress – but without there being any obvious alternative public channel to go down. The organisational convention – separation of operation problems and governance problems – was predicated on the assumption that there is public channel that a person can go down if there is an operational employment problem and that a person should therefore never end up in a position where they are contacting anyone in a governance role with an operational employment problem. No one expected a problem to arise of the form – a the new public channel is required that has not been built/tested. The situation itself and the set of conventions that applied to it was a real barrier to the problem being solved internally by the organisation.
I think this is why is this particular experience of raising concerns was exceptionally problematic – having not only yammer posts removed but a whole yammer account removed – because until you can properly formulate the concerns it is not possible to build and test the public channel that you need to go down – human rights case, work-related stress accident – and without properly formulated concerns the organisation is also unable to respond to and act on the concerns. The net result was ending up in a complete deadlock situation with an organisation something which cannot be broken until the concerns are properly formulated. It’s strange to encounter a situation where the complexity of situation itself proves to be the most significant barrier in having the situation appropriately handled.
In summary my yammer posts were removed and my yammer account was also removed. I was left crushed in the fault zone of shifting employment tectonic plates with a set of concerns that were not yet fully formulated and a pattern of abnormal work-related stressors the health impact of which was a barrier to fully formulating the concerns and getting out of that high health risk situation. I think it is when organisations start to encounter this type of deadlock situation with individuals that they can then resort to monitoring the social media of individuals but in doing so organisations often miss the existence of the tectonic plate dynamics that offer better explanations for the emergence deadlock situations with individuals than focussing on the social media of individuals who happened to end up in the deadlock situation with the organisation.
“Dear Elaine Nugent
I am writing to inform you that the attached posts have been drawn to our attention as a potential breach of our acceptable use guidelines for Yammer.
Having reviewed it, I have concluded that the post should be removed on the grounds that it is defamatory. I have also concluded that the post and your wider use of your account (which consists of excessively frequent posting about issues of concern to you) constitutes a breach of the acceptable use guidelines in the following respects:
1. The purpose of the network, which is to “build communities, share knowledge, engage one another, and be part of a professional network”
2. The aim of the network, which is to contribute to a “supportive and thriving working environment… free from inappropriate or unacceptable behaviour”
3. The obligation under the guidelines to be mindful of others, and to act in a considerate manner, as one would in other professional environments.
Accordingly, your access to your Yammer account is now removed.”
I openly asked an head of department on yammer whether they upheld the values of the department they lead : consideration : treating others as we would like others to treat us, respect for all : showing respect for each other, helping others to excel : actively seeking ways to enable everyone to give their best regardless of their circumstances, supporting career aspirations : encouraging and supporting others in pursuing their career aspirations, recognising contribution : recognising everyone’s contribution to the department success.
I said there was no intention for these values to ever be upheld in relation to every member of the Cavendish and that statement was judged to be defamation.
I felt this was one of a number of situations where the university didn’t have its legal priorities in the right order.
” … that statement was judged to be defamation”
Who made this judgment?
I had a similar email by the Head of Internal Communications and Deputy Director (Office of External Affairs and Communications) when in Viva Engage I encouraged UCam to read the article in the Guardian on staff satisfaction (https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/apr/12/cambridge-university-accused-of-bullying-cover-up-as-internal-survey-revealed) before suggesting more staff surveys.
One day after I made my post it was deleted on the grounds that it contravened the acceptable use guidelines of Viva Engage, according to which the platform should be “a safe, welcoming and inclusive community in which users treat one another with courtesy and professionalism even when challenging others’ views and opinions. There is no place for bullying, harassment, discrimination, sexual misconduct or victimisation.”
The Office for Students (OfS) contains on its Board the government’s free speech tsar, Prof Arif Ahmed (Cambridge academic, former Fellow of Gonville and Caius).
The OfS has outlined three major concerns currently being monitored by the regulator, all widespread in UK universities. They are
1 Compelling academics to affirm particular moral or political positions
2 Censuring remarks that might offend overseas governments
3 Suppressing internal criticism to protect institutional “reputation”
What was done to posters ‘Eileen Nugent’ and ‘The Researcher’ falls under category 3.
Free speech is something that both the new Chancellor Chris Smith and the Vice Chancellor Prof Deborah Prentice have repeatedly and publicly stated is important
If there are more examples of suppression of internal criticism to protect reputations, then please provide them to us either here in the blog or at [email protected]
We hope to prepare a submission to Prof Ahmed and the Office for Students, copying to both the Chancellor and the Vice Chancellor (given their stated positions).
The judgment was communicated to me by University Information Services but it’s not clear to me who made the judgment. The university seemed to have classified this particular operational problem as an information services operational problem which I thought to be a misclassification because I would have classified it as a HR operational problem. I would have expected the HR director as the designated organisational safeguarding lead to communicate that judgment and to have ensured suitable safeguarding arrangements were put in place for all individuals concerned and for the University to have left Information Services completely out of that situation other than to request their technical services to have changes made to a yammer account. To me information services operational problems are things like – this spam which I find distressing keeps getting through my email spam filters, is there any way to improve the spam filters on university email accounts.
At the time I had not factored in the possibility that the decisions being taken – facts I was using to evidence an opinion in relation to an individual – were not only not being taken by the department but that it was possible that the department and by extension its leader had lost all influence over the organisational response at that point in time. Since the situation that generated the opinion was an operational employment problem it is likely that the organisational response at the time was being driven by the organisations internal legal advisors and significantly influenced by the organisations external legal advisors. This error in thinking in an ongoing complex organisational safeguarding situation meant that I formed an opinion of an individual – one I think most people could have formed and honestly held in that situation given the facts of the situation – but one that subsequently turned out to be inaccurate. Had the organisation been more transparent in its communications with me about this situation I would not have had those errors in thinking at that time, I would not have held this opinion never mind sharing it on yammer and that situation could have been avoided.
There are significant risks in these compound safeguarding situations because after some time in one of them – years – it becomes increasingly difficult to continuously balance safeguarding risk to others with your own safeguarding risk and you owe a duty of care to everyone in the compound safeguarding situation and that includes all those who are handling the safeguarding situation. I had an acute mental breakdown after this event when I was trying to mentally process what had happened. The university throws people into one of these compound safeguarding situations and it expects them all to know what the exact right thing to do is at every point in time in one of them, that everyone will know exactly how to handle this type of situation, that there will be a perfect balance of all the safeguarding risks at all times in these situations. It didn’t work like that in practice, if an organisation refuses to communicate with all individuals in one of these situations then it is impossible to continuously balance all of the safeguarding risks at all times for all individuals in one of them, that then introduces an element of trial and error in raising concerns in these situations which is pain beyond pain.
I would have expected the head of HR to have communicated more transparently on the problematic yammer posts the university had highlighted before removing them and to have discussed the decision in relation to removing the yammer account as there were many posts that contained useful information on the regulation of work-related stress including links to information from the university itself and information from the health and safety executive.
Encountering extreme difficulty in this particular kind of situation is not unexpected if you are aware that you are an individual being crushed in the fault zone between two major moving national tectonic plates but this awareness of the bigger forces at play in these situations comes only very slowly in one of them. One national tectonic plate is a long-established national legal convention that all operational employment problems have an established public channel that ends in an employment tribunal and this includes all whistleblowing concerns :
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/archive/rja14/Papers/commissary-rja14-2023.pdf
https://www.11kbw.com/knowledge-events/case/a-re-engagement-order-does-not-give-an-unfairly-dismissed-employee-an-actual-right-to-be-re-engaged/
The second national tectonic plate is a new legal obligation to regulate work-related stress – health and safety regulation – which means that it is possible for individuals in a governance role to acquire a legal obligation to raise concerns in relation to problems with the organisational regulation of work-related stress.
https://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/overview.htm
The legal obligation to regulate work-related stress is a new one that has just been introduced and on introduction is immediately on a collision course with another tectonic plate. What happens when individuals are crushed at the fault zone between this particular set of legal tectonic plates that are on a collision course :
https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/health-and-safety-regulator-twice-refused-to-probe-multiple-jobcentre-breakdowns/
You see the same patterns in these cases : individuals find themselves in the fault zone between tectonic plates = deadlock on individual cases = pattern of abnormal stressors for people & organisations have particular difficulty in dealing with compound safeguarding situations.
What is at the fault zone between these two national tectonic plates : inhuman conditions.
This is the critical point to understand : when an organisation nucleates this type of compound safeguarding situation which it will then find extremely challenging to handle and defuse, it’s not just one person in the organisation being crushed in the fault zone between that set of tectonic plates – it’s a group of people – it’s an organisational work-related stress accident which is why it is important for the organisation to learn to recognise that situation for what it is in order to break the deadlock in individual cases so it can handle and defuse the compound safeguarding situation nucleated.
For many people even inside the system it is the only way to get clues as to what is really going on because everything is kept so secret
“because everything is kept so secret”
…aka confidential…😉
Beware, beware the teddy bear
…or the one with the “concerned face”
who will follow up on accusations without base
and allow the snake to disappear without trace
This is exactly like the former GDR and the Stasi. Recall visitors were often asked and even by somewhat senior individuals “so, tell me, what does the capitalist press say about our country these days?”
“This is exactly like the former GDR and the Stasi.”
Yes, this is exactly like the former GDR and the Stasi, inclusive of the Spitzel…
Jane and Jo Blogs who feel empowered by the duty to report to HR any and all they feel is inappropriate, preferably about those they don’t like.
And the archetypal Professor Creeps whose life and research have so run out of spice they now snoop on everyone else’s, regardless as to whether it’s legal, to say nothing of ethical…
…and so enjoy reporting their resentment, their concern, their suspicion, their frustration, knowing that HR is there to listen and judge the reported crimes, not the crimes of the reporter…
21percent.org you have to show these statistics to the nacional newspapers!!! Only a press scandal will lead to some movement! Post Office 2.0!!!
“Only a press scandal will lead to some movement!”
True. But given the persuasion capacity of the Consigliere University in interactions with the press, we need more than one scandal at this stage, ideally from different Departments and Schools to stress the systemic nature of the problem is.
Bloody right!
———— Breaking News —————
If you ever considered the University Safeguarding Statement, (https://www.governanceandcompliance.admin.cam.ac.uk/files/university_safeguarding_statement_may_2025.pdf), you will see table 2, which among other important things states, says that for “Concerns relating to Prevent” contact the “Secretary to the Referral Group of the Committee on Prevent and Freedom of Speech via [email protected].”
I just contacted them earlier today. Guess who answered, Dr James Knapton, the Head of Data Protection and Information Compliance. For those who made a DSAR and did not receive the data you requested, you understand why I am concerned. As usual, Dr Knapton evaded my questions. You may want to check this story that was published by the 21 Group (https://21percent.org/?p=1608) to understand why I am shocked by this finding.