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Cuts, “voluntary severances\u201d and redundancies dominate the UK higher education landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But not for all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The management bloat in UK universities continues to swell even as lecturers & researchers are made unemployed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The University of Nottingham has just advertised for a Chief People Officer<\/a>. The salary is \u00a3140,000 to \u00a3153,000 per annum, roughly double a standard professorial salary. There\u2019s private medical insurance, of course. And salary increases as recommended by UCEA<\/a>. The full candidate package is available from the executive search firm Society as a pdf here<\/a>, should you wish to join the dark side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “As Chief People Officer, you will help to overhaul Nottingham\u2019s operating model, spearheading initiatives that contribute to an inclusive, globally-aware and innovation-oriented organisational outlook, with high levels of staff wellbeing. In doing so, you will ensure that the university can continue to meet its academic ambitions, to achieve its strategic objectives, and to elevate its ranking and reputation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The University of Nottingham has already “elevated its rankings”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It has the largest number of Employment Tribunal <\/a>cases since 2017 of any UK university. It is the leading user of Non-Disclosure Agreements to hush up wrongdoings, like bullying and harassment, as we blogged earlier<\/a>. It is the top university for severance payouts in 2024, disbursing \u00a313.8 m to 408 employees, as the Times Higher Education reported here<\/a>. This suggests all is not well, with poor staff-employer relations at the University. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The former Vice Chancellor Shearer West fled to the University of Leeds in November 2024. The new Vice Chancellor is West’s former deputy, Professor Jane Norman<\/a>. There is a video of her here<\/a> reading from a script, smilelessly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This new post is part of “a major organisational transformation programme<\/em>“. It is one of “several senior leadership roles within the Professional Services domain<\/em>” which they are looking to fill. The Chief People Officer is not the same as the Director of Human Resources (HR). At Nottingham University, the HR Director is a separate post, currently filled on an interim basis. The Chief People Officer is a member of the new University Executive Board (pictured at the top), reporting to the Chief Operating Officer. There are just 12 substantive members of the UEB. So, the Chief People Officer is a very powerful position indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clearly, the HR Director at University of Nottingham is no doubt busy with the normal work of university HR — investigating people, making people redundant, negotiating severance packages, dealing with all the Employment Tribunal cases and explaining away all the delays on HR software projects. So what does the Chief People Officer actually do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The job description is full of words like “driving the university’s long-term people and organisational strategy<\/em>” or “spearheading initiatives that contribute to an inclusive, globally-aware and innovation-oriented organisational culture<\/em>” or “serving as a spokesperson for HR and change initiatives, fostering positive relationships with a range of global stakeholders<\/em>” or “creating a strategic HR agenda that delivers long-term sustainable momentum and cultural renewal for the University<\/em>“.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What do these words even mean? These are corporate buzz words for saving money on the core activities of teaching and research, whilst expanding the executive. They strongly suggest that still more academic jobs losses are on the way at the University of Nottingham (at least in the UK, perhaps not the China and Malaysia campuses).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Remarkably, HR departments continue to increase in size, even as universities are being dismantled. For example, at Cambridge University, the HR department has doubled in size in under a decade. There were 99 HR employees in 2014 and there were 226 in 2024. This is part of the substantial increase in administration numbers we have already reported here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why do HR staff never think that it is they who should be made redundant? HR has long valued its own self-importance over the people who actually generate the money for the university through research and teaching. In fact, HR are often active in destroying successful research groups and undermining departments. Examples of this at Russell Group universities are given here<\/a> and here<\/a>. HR are not even cost neutral — normally they are a huge net financial drain to any university.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The endpoint of this trajectory is a highly paid executive, full of meaningless bluster about people strategy and momentum, with all the teaching done by an impoverished adjunct staff and all the research done under fixed term contracts. That is the aim of the Chief People Officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why’s HR increasing? We think Judge has the answer in an earlier blog comment:<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a classic management failure in the public sector. NHS = key case study. It goes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. Frontline staff (doctors, teachers, researchers) \u2013> sustained decline in real income + increased workload (understaffing, sickness, talent exit) (Hat tip, blog poster Judge) <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n So the main attribute of the Chief People Officer is to cover all this up with spin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 21 Group thanks Prof Alexandra Wilson of Jesus College, Oxford for drawing its attention to this job <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cuts, “voluntary severances\u201d and redundancies dominate the UK higher education landscape. But not for all. The management bloat in UK universities continues to swell even as lecturers & researchers are made unemployed. The University of Nottingham has just advertised for a Chief People Officer. The salary is \u00a3140,000 to \u00a3153,000 per […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1458"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1534,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458\/revisions\/1534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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2. Management response = divert growing resources to HR \/ administration (\u201cfix\u201d the problem)
3. Result is frontline salaries depressed further \u2013> staffing failures accelerate
4. Problems extend to stress + safety failures + lawsuits
5. Increasing costs sucked in to solving secondary problems (healthcare + legal) arising from (3) as management continues to bloat itself at the expense of core service delivery
6. Eventual systemic collapse and insolvency \/ bailout. <\/p>\n\n\n\n