{"id":3341,"date":"2026-03-08T10:31:35","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T10:31:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=3341"},"modified":"2026-03-08T12:05:41","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T12:05:41","slug":"the-hr-ification-of-cambridge-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=3341","title":{"rendered":"The HR-ification of Cambridge University"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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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<\/a>. Its report<\/a> on the growth of HR has received widespread attention, eg in The Times <\/a> and BBC Radio 4<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The HR Review<\/a> 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.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/em>, the sector experienced an 83% growth, rising from just under 300,000 workers in 2011 to over 500,000 in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Criticism of the growth of HR from a centre-left perspective is available as well, for example in The New Statesman<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“Why were recruitment processes taking so long? To ensure fairness. Who decides what\u2019s fair? The Public Sector Equality Duty, in precedents set by courts and interpreted or pre-empted by employment lawyers and HR advisers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

So, what has been happening in Cambridge University?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00a0HR staffing grew proportionally faster than overall university headcount\u00a0during 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201310), while smaller departments like Astronomy might have 2\u20133 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the UK has seen a 83\u202f% 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a>). The greater the inefficiency or incompetence within the HR leadership, the faster this cycle occurs \u2014 shortening the \u2018doubling time\u2019 of the HR workforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/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-3341","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\/3341","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=3341"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3366,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341\/revisions\/3366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}