This week, the growth of Human Resources (HR) has been in the news because of a publication from the centre-right think tank Policy Exchange. Its report on the growth of HR has received widespread attention, eg in The Times and BBC Radio 4. The most striking claim is that the UK now has almost twice the workforce employed in HR as the EU, and 60% more than the US.
The HR Review is a news and information resource for human resources and related professionals. It somewhat gleefully agrees that the number of HR staff has grown substantially in the UK. In fact, it has claimed that the number of staff working in HR has overtaken those in the medical and legal professions here.
It is certainly true that the United Kingdom is an international outlier with its dominant and rapidly expanding HR sector. It ranks among the largest in the world, second only to the Netherlands. While HR employment has been steadily increasing across most Western countries, the UK is a leader in the field. According to the Labour Force Survey (LFS) from the Office of National Statistics, the sector experienced an 83% growth, rising from just under 300,000 workers in 2011 to over 500,000 in 2023.
Criticism of the growth of HR from a centre-left perspective is available as well, for example in The New Statesman
“Why were recruitment processes taking so long? To ensure fairness. Who decides what’s fair? The Public Sector Equality Duty, in precedents set by courts and interpreted or pre-empted by employment lawyers and HR advisers.
Why were so many employee grievances settled at such great expense, before and after employment tribunals? Because there were so many transgressions of HR policy, often by the very people who had codified the rules”. [Pamela Dow in The New Statesman, from which above infographic also comes]
So, what has been happening in Cambridge University?
The UAS (Unified Administrative Service) is the central administrative body of the University that provides core professional services across many functions such as finance, governance, estates, legal services and HR. It operates under the authority of the University Council and is led by the Registrary. The Human Resources Division is one of the divisions within the UAS.
The HR headcount in the UAS of Cambridge University increased from 97 in 2010 to 226 in 2024. This is a net increase of +129 staff and an overall growth of ~133%.
Another way to look at the data is to plot HR headcount growth alongside total university headcount (that is, the total number of established and unestablished posts). This visual helps illustrate that HR staffing grew proportionally faster than overall university headcount during the period from 2010-2024. Both plots show the key transition point, which is the substantial post-2021 expansion in HR. This was part of the mission of the former Registrary (Ms Emma Rampton) to transform professional services in the University.
To be clear, these numbers only refer to HR staff that are members of UAS. The numbers do not include those performing HR functions in the departments. There are ~150 departments in Cambridge University. In practice, larger departments like Physics or Engineering have several local HR professionals (roughly 5–10), while smaller departments like Astronomy might have 2–3 local HR staff. This suggests that at minimum, there are a further ~ 500 staff working in HR services at the University. For fairness, it must also be pointed out that HR services need to be provided to postdoctoral staff who are not included in the university headcount numbers.
While the UK has seen a 83 % rise in HR employment over the past decade, Cambridge University has outpaced even that, with HR staff more than doubling since 2010. The machinery of people management has grown faster than the people it serves, underscoring just how pronounced the local expansion has been.
Each new HR layer generates more processes and problems, which in turn require additional HR to manage them, creating a self-reinforcing cycle (the so-called HR Death Spiral). The greater the inefficiency or incompetence within the HR leadership, the faster this cycle occurs — shortening the ‘doubling time’ of the HR workforce.
18 Comments
21percent.org · 8 March 2026 at 10:43
Another observation in Pamela Dow’s New Statesman article is this:
The majority of HR workers are university graduates, a rise in recent decades similar to other administrative sectors. Perhaps more surprising is the shift towards HR roles as a first occupation on completing a range of degrees. We might have guessed this would be a career destination for psychology and business studies graduates, but did those 18-year-olds, as shown in the table opposite, choosing history, English, politics, languages or philosophy expect to be HR officers? This may illustrate “elite overproduction” in the social sciences, or in other words, of too many humanities graduates and not enough jobs for them. It’s worth noting that HR has been the beneficiary in Britain, rather than, for example, teaching. Alongside good pay and job security, in many organisations HR allows influence on high-status topics, incommensurate with position: global social justice and identity campaigns.
0.02c · 8 March 2026 at 16:10
What is throttling the British economy is a combination of a) decades of regulatory additions and b) a total failure of enforcement and/or clear case precedent.
a) means that no one really has a clue what the rules are, and managers cannot manage without consulting HR (typically for career protection – even though the ethical decision is often screamingly obvious), while
b) means that cases take years to reach court and then settled prior to judicial outcome – offering no clarification under common law that should guide future HR decisions
The solution is to prioritise enforcement (and clarification!) of current rules and deal with employers who exploit the weaknesses of the current system.
The new Employment Rights Act 2025 could have done that if whistleblower protection were enforced and sanctions for case delay augmented.
Either way it has to come in with strict targets like we have for NHS waiting lists – including significant new spending to employ additional judges and court staff (perhaps instead of hiring HR personnel?) and fast-tracking of the worst cases to court faster with firm final rulings – so that employers finally realise it will be less costly to comply with the law than pay HR “professionals” to help them game the system.
Kali · 8 March 2026 at 16:12
Teaching … what’s that compared to the thrill of destroying a person?
The university pretends it is a place for cultivating minds, but the true sport lies in finding the weak seam in someone’s confidence, tearing it open and breaking them down.
Selecting the victim, fabricating the evidence, writing the “independent” report, seeing the victim slowly becoming paralysed with fear and madness. There’s nothing they can do. They’re trapped.
There’s no risk, everyone at the top knows we’re killers. They’ll always back us. Often they’ll help us choose the next victim.
Our loyalty is entirely to the HR division, not the university.
Who cares what happens to the university, whether it falls in the rankings? Who cares about the students, the staff, the university’s reputation? That doesn’t interest us at all.
TheResearcher · 8 March 2026 at 16:04
Their increasing number does not worry me as much as their decreasing quality, and by that I do not simply mean they are incompetent but also corrupt and malicious. It seems clear that many members of UCam already view HR as seriously incompetent, but the issue is much worse than that. Challenge their practices and see what happens next.
21percent.org · 8 March 2026 at 16:41
You rightly emphasis integrity, and we agree with you that lack of integrity is a serious problem in many university HR divisions. However, the numbers do have an effect, both in universities & the wider economy (as @0.02c indicates). The relentless growth of HR personnel across both private and public sectors is weighing on the economy, driving up the cost of goods and services and eroding the purchasing power of every tax pound.
As Pamela Dow’s article says “If we could track trends towards higher retention, happier workers, fewer grievances, this growth would be welcome. If there was a correlation with HR and improved outcomes it would be rational for leaders to invest more. There is evidence for the opposite. As HR roles have increased so too have the number of tribunals and days lost to work-related illness, while productivity has flatlined. HR expansion is not coinciding with desirable things and appears to be coinciding with undesirable ones.”
We certainly know in Cambridge that the increase in HR personnel correlates with increased DSARs, increased Occupational Health referrals, increased counselling referrals, increased sick leave & increased numbers of Employment Tribunals. There seems no sign that the University senior management has noticed this correlation and tried to understand what is driving it.
Lucas · 8 March 2026 at 16:49
In my view there is a very simple means of unblocking our beleaguered Tribunal system: to broaden the scope for public interest reporting in the press.
The current system has introduced a perverse effect of undermining compliance by forcing claimants to stay silent for years while cases grind through the works. We saw with the Post Office scandal what that meant – a failure of open public debate, no accountability, and the attempt (almost successful) to exhaust victims financially.
The real reason employers game the system until the final moment is fear of exposure. So that’s what needs to change. Journalists in the UK have to comply with strict defamation rules and that means little risk of prejudice in letting them break those instances where the evidence is overwhelming, and employer delays simply waste ET time and resources. The result would be a huge increase in amicable agreements and a rapid clearance of case backlog.
BN · 9 March 2026 at 20:29
True. Even on this forum people avoid stating the facts in comments, out of fear of legal retribution, even though everyone has a right to state the truth. There needs to be a right to freedom of speech.
21percent.org · 10 March 2026 at 10:35
Indeed, we need a First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
We try and prioritise free speech in the blog comments. There’s too much repression in universities already, despite the Chancellors & Vice Chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge repeatedly emphasising the importance of free speech
TheResearcher · 10 March 2026 at 11:26
Correct me if I am wrong but it is my understanding that the truth is an absolute defense against defamation claims. The University of Cambridge is very welcome to sue me if I have stated here or in my emails to internal or external parties anything that is untrue about how OSCCA, HR and the senior leadership have treated me. I am still waiting for a “cease and desist” letter and it has not arrived yet. Rest assured, I will make post it here when/if it does.
# · 10 March 2026 at 17:20
I believe that is correct but regrettably, there is a pattern in British public life showing how major national institutions like the Post Office, BBC (Savile…) or universities (recent Oxford scandals) place pressure on journalists and civil society groups to prevent such facts coming to light. Ironically doing so does not “protect” reputation but has the opposite eventual outcome. If Savile was exposed in the 1970s then by now, no one would remember him. Oxford had plenty of time after the Degrees of Abuse story in Al Jazeera to set matters straight. The key facts of the Post Office scandal were known a decade or more in advance, but only Private Eye would report, and that only because Private Eye, too, is a strange kind of national institution with an informal “free pass” to report what others will not.
21percent.org · 10 March 2026 at 19:19
Even if you publish and you are right, you will still lose money if it goes to court. The Guardian versus Noel Clarke is an example.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/sep/23/noel-clarke-ordered-to-pay-initial-3m-in-legal-costs-to-the-guardian-after-losing-libel-case
So Clarke has been ordered to pay The Guardian‘s costs, with an initial payment of £3m. But, Clarke is now bankrupt, so he can’t pay.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/noel-clarke-declared-bankrupt-guardian-libel-case-b1266928.html
The Guardian was vindicated, winning both its ‘truth’ and ‘public interest’ defences. But it will have lost millions
Yeah... · 10 March 2026 at 20:33
The British system is the worst of both worlds. Rich people and businesses can afford to pay millions to intimidate journalists and activists with phony “cease and desist” letters. But ordinary people have no such protection – they can’t afford it. So scandals at the top go unreported while Joe and Jane Bloggs are subject to tabloid nonsense and retaliatory rumour. In my opinion you either need a system like Scandinavia where it’s a criminal offense so ordinary people are protected the same or like America where everyone can say whatever the hell they like but powerful people are exposed as well. Not sure what I prefer but either would be a lot fairer.
Raven · 9 March 2026 at 11:15
With reference to the Statesman piece:
“While there is demand from graduates, HR job supply is conditional on the HR function having the power to sway employers’ choices.”
“Professions – law, surgery, accountancy – have a status which depends on specific criteria. They rightly require expertise, combining objective knowledge and practice: learned, assessed and accredited. They are distinct in contributing a shared civic good, necessary for a safe and fair society, and so valued outside a market. These factors beget a collective interest in standards, trusted ethical codes, and representative bodies to regulate entry and exit.
HR and its representative bodies have built the apparatus of a profession but without these crucial defining criteria. Specialist HR knowledge can be acquired on the job, and once was, usually by non-graduates. In most cases it isn’t objective. If it was, we wouldn’t see so many successful challenges to the application or misapplication of HR policy.”
The most worrying aspect is the coexistence of power (or pretence to) within an organisation and the absence of objective criteria determining the skills, expertise, achievements and remit of any one HR practitioner, at any one level.
So, unaccredited, un-assessable and unregulated personnel practising and learning on the job can end up advising Heads of Department and Heads of School, can end up defining processes and policies, can end up influencing decision-making of committees recruiting the next Head of Department, or determining promotion and reward within entire schools, confidently citing “conflict of interest” or “propriety” while having no idea what they actually mean. They can end up creating an aura of knowledge, expertise and privileged access to “legal advice” which is nothing but the fantasy of an overinflated ego.
And yet, key personnel in universities end up relying on these individuals for advice, decision-making, response-letters and witness statements, believing (or so it seems) that what they are receiving is “expert advice”, and that the source of this expert advice is therefore worthy of the trust they are given.
Unaccredited, un-assessable and unregulated HR staff will also have access to all the very confidential information pertaining to the processes on which they “advise”. They will be able to delve into the depths of any employee’s very personal personnel files. Undefined HR “expertise” defines the trust to handle such confidential and sensitive information “appropriately”. It also justifies decision-making as to who else should have access to it, and who shouldn’t.
Concerns have been raised about HR performance in our university, this time with objective criteria such as documentable evidence. The refusal by those in charge (whoever they might be) to investigate should give us an indication of how worried we should be.
TheResearcher · 9 March 2026 at 14:01
“Concerns have been raised about HR performance in our university, this time with objective criteria such as documentable evidence. The refusal by those in charge (whoever they might be) to investigate should give us an indication of how worried we should be.”
It works both ways as it also tells us how worried they are about the issues. Professor Kamal Munir, for example, knows that many people already complained against the Lead HR Business Partner Ms Louise Akroyd, and with documentable evidence, but he dismissed the complaints sometimes even without conducting any investigation and following her advice. The consequence? An increasing number of people knows about his behaviour, knows what they should expect when they raise a complaint through him, and hopefully Prof. Munir will have the chance to explain his behaviour in the Tribunal. Surely, if the evidence was non-existent and the complaint was “vexatious,” they would not mind to conducting an investigation, at least one of their fake ones. However, this is no longer an option because the complainants will no longer buy it, and the University cannot afford an external investigation because the evidence is overwhelming. In this case, their refusal to investigate is indicative of how worried they are about the issue. What worries me the most is that I know what Ms Akroyd and others can do, and at the moment I can do little to prevent that what happened with me happens with others.
Eileen Nugent · 9 March 2026 at 14:28
I think HR as a profession has been naive with respect to its own development as a profession. HR professionals seem to have accepted as reality a situation where there was significant professional reward with seemingly little to no significant professional risk – at odds with reality.
To achieve that state – significant professional rewards with seemingly no significant professional risk – HR professionals effectively coupled themselves to in-house Legal professionals in organisations and the subset of external legal professionals advising them on anything HR related.
What this means is that the overall risks and the reward-risk ratio of the in-house legal professionals that HR professionals coupled themselves to (+ external legal advisors on HR related matters) then changes as the legal professionals are taking on additional professional risks not associated with their own profession and not associated with any rewards they themselves are receiving.
Significant new risks then arise for legal professionals because they are then handling the professional risks of two professions – HR and Legal – when they should only be handling the professional risks of one profession – legal profession – risks which can in themselves be extremely difficult for legal professionals to manage in any complex organisational situation without taking on the professional risks of another profession – HR.
It is then significant extra work for legal professionals to get their organisational judgments right in any organisational situation because that situation in of itself – HR coupling to Legal – creates dynamically shifting conflicts of interests in any situation with both HR and Legal elements. An in-house head of Legal could then be left trying to manage their own professional risks – which they have maximum control over & is normal situation for legal professional – and the professional risks of the head of HR – which they may have very little control over & is an abnormal situation for legal professional.
This creates additional professional risk for legal professionals – risk that is inherently much more difficult for them to manage as it is not the professional risk they have been trained to manage by their own profession – for no extra reward. The creation of an unbalanced risk-reward situation for HR professionals leads to the creation an unbalance risk-reward situation for Legal Professionals that HR professionals have coupled themselves to manage their professional risk.
Legal is then under the maximum pressure to do the right thing in any organisational situation generated by HR professional not meeting professional HR standards – in higher risk, lower reward position with respect any HR generated situation. In order to minimise their own professional risk they need to minimise HR professional risk but will get no extra reward for doing so. Since legal does not have control over HR, it is reliant on HR – in lower risk, higher reward position – to do the right thing to manage their own professional HR risk in any situation generated by HR themselves.
Since HR have the most conflicts of interest in any HR generated situation then for HR to do right thing in that specific type of situation – manage its own HR professional risk – is going to take a maximum work/effort from HR. HR are under the minimum pressure to do that maximum work in relation to that specific type of situation because they appear to face low to no professional risk themselves for not doing the maximum work in that type of situation. HR are also the ones in the organisation to whom reward for managing any HR-related organisational risk will accrue when others in the organisation – legal professionals – manage their HR professional risks in any HR generated situation in addition to managing all other aspects of that HR-related situation for the organisation, including their own legal professional risks and the legal and HR risks to the organisation that accompany any HR generated situation.
The problem is HR are naive enough to think that a situation where legal professionals manage their professional risk is sustainable over the longer term. It’s not sustainable for legal professionals because it distorts their own risk-reward and professional risk management conditions. It can put legal professions under undue pressure to either
(i) actively manage the professional risks of HR professionals i.e. legal professionals over control HR professionals and by extension organisational HR in order to actively manage HR professional risk in addition to actively managing legal professional risk leading to a permanent overwork of Legal professionals and permanent feelings of being overly controlled by others for HR professionals – an overwork- over control Legal/HR situation at the operational governance epi-center of an organisation to sustain the abnormal risk-reward and professional risk management conditions. Legal learn how to do two jobs – Legal and HR – putting themselves in overwork conditions. This has the appearance of minimising legal risk and HR risk for an organisation but both overwork and over control are significant HR risks and have the potential to generate significant correspond legal risks that legal may not then be in a position to manage themselves so in reality this approach has not minimised organisational HR risk and legal risk in the longer term.
or
(ii) plaster over any problems with HR professionals – ignore problems with HR and an organisational risk arising from HR – in order for legal professionals to achieve a normal risk-reward and normal professional risk management conditions for themselves in the shorter term putting both legal professionals and the organisations they legally represent at increased risk in the longer term. This the opposite type of response, an underwork, under-control situation that also doesn’t minimise legal risk and HR risk in an organisation but that result is less surprising in this case – underwork, under control – than for the overwork over-control situation above.
The above is not sustainable for legal professionals, it’s not sustainable for organisations and it’s not even sustainable for HR professionals themselves in the longer term.
I think this is why HR organisational risks are currently so difficult for legal professionals to manage because in managing them legal professionals are taking on the combined risks of the HR profession and the Legal profession and that skews the risk-reward balance for both HR professionals and Legal professionals in any HR generated situation and that can in turn distort the organisational response in any HR generated situation away from an optimal organisational response that minimises both HR and legal risk for the organisation.
Eileen Nugent · 9 March 2026 at 21:43
This was something I never understood. If I were to meet an in-house head of legal in Cambridge, I would expect to meet a person with extremely high professional standards. If I were to meet a to meet the head of HR in Cambridge, I would expect to meet a person with exceptional sensitivity in handling difficult and complex HR cases. I couldn’t then understand how that particular combination could go so wrong for an exacting organisation until I saw the possibility of this overwork over-control situation due to an abnormal professional risk management situation.
The head of Legal could have extremely high professional standards and the head of HR could have extremely high sensitivity in handling difficult and complex HR cases. Both could be exceptionally well matched candidates for their individual roles in the organisation. The head of legal is expected to manage HR professional risk in additional to legal professional risk – this seems to be the case for legal & HR professionals in the UK – this is an abnormal professional risk management situation.
That abnormal professional risk management situation means the head of legal will tend to overwork to over-control the head of HR in proportion to the absolute level of their own professional legal standards, the higher their absolute professional standards the higher their level of overwork to exert over-control over the head of HR. That then tends to reduce the level of control the head of HR has in any difficult and complex HR situation and the overall HR sensitivity with which the head of HR can respond in any difficult and complex HR situation in proportion to the absolute level of the professional standards of the head of Legal.
Professional standards then have the opposite impact on sensitivity than one would expect. If the head of HR were responding to a HR situation in proportion to the absolute level of their own professional HR standards where the overall HR sensitivity would then increases in proportion to the absolute level of HR professional standards as one would expect. Higher professional standards should translate into higher sensitivity in any situation where the professional skills associated with the professional standards are being exercised.
Here the abnormal professional risk management situation and the resultant abnormal Legal-HR coupling means that higher professional legal standards resulting in overcontrol of HR is leading to a reduction in HR sensitivity. One set of professional standards is suppressing another set of professional standards because of the abnormal coupling between them arising from the abnormal professional risk management situation. There is then the possibility that one set of high professional standards could completely cancel out another set of high professional standards in a situation where both sets of high professional standards are required to precisely manage a situation e.g. a particularly difficult and complex HR-Legal situation.
This overall reduction in HR sensitivity in proportion to the absolute level of legal professional standards increases the probability of a difficult and complex HR case going wrong for the organisation as difficult and complex cases are where the reduction in HR sensitivity is most keenly felt and where HR sensitivity is most needed to work out the correct organisational HR response in the situation and prevent that situation from spiralling out of control.
If as a result of reduced HR sensitivity in an already difficult and complex HR case an exceptionally difficult and complex HR case is generated for the organisation to manage that in turns means the head of Legal will tend to engage in higher levels of overwork and higher levels of overcontrol of the head of HR because there is then more HR organisational risk and also more Legal organisational risk to be managed.
Head of HR sensitivity then tends to be suppressed even further as the head of Legal continuously tries to raise the absolute level of legal professional standards in response to an increase in organisational legal problems. That combination then increases the risk of an already serious organisational problem worsening. That is a particularly vicious HR-Legal cycle for any head of Legal and head of HR to jointly enter into and a particularly difficult cycle to break out if entered into.
The introduction of a HR-legal obligation to regulate work-related stress will have increased the absolute viciousness of that cycle – overwork, over-control – but will also have offered a way to understand that cycle and to break out of that cycle – was a double edged sword. Whilst the former impact will have immediately been felt by anyone actively experiencing that vicious cycle it takes much more time to understand the existence of the latter impact.
The introduction of that particular HR-legal obligation – legal obligation to regulate work-related stress – will have been felt like extreme pain with no gain in sight and no prospect of their ever being any gain in sight when in fact that is not the case, there is HR-legal gain for HR-legal pain as one would expect for any rational HR-legal obligation but significant amounts of new understanding with respect to that new HR-legal obligation are required to see that is the case.
If both the head of legal and head of HR in an organisation are exceptionally well matched for their professional roles in an organisation that combination is likely to produce an exceptional result of some kind for an organisation but unfortunately for organisations an exceptionally good result is not the only kind exceptional result possible. That combination can also produce an exceptionally tragic result for an organisation.
If the result produced for an organisation from the combined efforts of two individuals in professional roles in an organisation doesn’t reflect what two individuals are capable of in their individual professional roles in an organisation but instead reflects how an abnormal professional risk management situation interacts with having exceptionally well matched heads of HR and legal in place in an organisation that itself has exacting organisational standards at a time when that abnormal professional risk management situation happens to exist a tragic outcome for an organisation is then possible.
If the result produced for an organisation further reflects how the introduction a new HR-Legal obligation can seriously worsen an organisational problem it has been introduced to fix before eventually making it possible to fix that organisational problem – one that has arisen due to the existence of an abnormal professional risk management situation – then an exceptionally tragic result for an organisation and for everyone in that organisation is possible.
SPARTACUS · 9 March 2026 at 16:32
The Head of HR at UCam is poor! She runs an unprofessional bunch that constantly breach the Statutes and therefore the law! The American Queen and before her the Little Canadian Lawyer have protected her because they only care about one thing: their huge paycheck and the lavish benefits. UCam is therefore doomed! Rotten decay is what we all observe!
Finch · 10 March 2026 at 19:31
A growing HR department costs money without generating any.
Worse, it diminishes the parts that generate revenue through teaching and research.
So, damage done by an HR department of N people grows super-linearly, It’s at least an N^2 effect