Dear members,
Last December we sent you our opinions of a management culture that we believed was one of the worst ever seen at our University. We highlighted a failure of our Executive Board (EB) to hold themselves to the standards they had come to require of ordinary staff, and we noted an increasingly dismissive attitude towards us, despite a formal recognition agreement that sets out expected levels of engagement with campus trade unions.
As 2024 progressed, the extent of EB’s shortcomings became increasingly manifest, largely through evidence of extreme mismanagement of our finances: a £20M loan towards the purchase of the AQA Building, £11M on Future Fellowships, eye-watering amounts on projects with ambiguous titles such as “Strategic Opportunities Fund” and “Size and Shape”, together with an undisclosed amount on the rushed creation of Surrey Online Learning programmes in partnership with a company that seems about to go bankrupt. Amid speculation about how this could have happened (why did EB and Council sign off projects we could not afford? Was this an accounting mistake – did someone miscarry a couple of zeroes? Why do we need a dilapidated exam paper factory anyway?) was the realisation that while our collective resources had been squandered by relatively few, the sacrifices to offset the damage was going to have to be made by relatively many.
There was some initial insistence via local “Financial Resilience Programme” meetings that despite clear evidence to the contrary none of this was their fault. Our managers tried desperately to blame sector-wide challenges to excuse their mistakes rather than acknowledge that such flagrant spending should not have occurred in such a climate in the first place. Perhaps there are lots of other Universities that are in dire hardship, but also a good proportion that are not. If the millions had not been frittered away on follies and doomed vanity projects we would have stood a better chance of remaining financially secure.
Instead, according to recent HESA data, the University of Surrey has the second highest debt-to-income ratio of any UK HEI. Our net “days to liquidity”, a measure of financial security reported by HESA, plummeted from 246 in 2016/17 when Max Lu started as Vice Chancellor, to just 69 in the last accounting period of 2022/23.
After the excuses fell flat, came a communications blackout. In School and Faculty meetings any mention of the Financial Resilience Programme was vetoed. Access to all-staff email lists were heavily restricted in an attempt to smother public dissent. Most extraordinary of all was the total silence from Max Lu and Tim Dunne – during one of the most uncertain times in the history of the University, months passed without any public update or word of explanation from either of the two most senior managers that we should have been able to look to for leadership.
Perhaps there was a view that hiding in silence would make everyone forget what was happening and who was to blame – if so, this was a PR strategy that spectacularly backfired and led to our since “outgoing” VC achieving the dishonour of sustaining his second vote-of-no-confidence during his time at Surrey; this time of 97% from a very high turnout, a vote which was shared with the Provost, Tim Dunne. Strong leaders, had they somehow managed to get themselves into this position, would at this point have attempted to reassure their staff – perhaps acknowledging their accountability or perhaps making evident a level of competence consistent with their positions and salaries. But here, it was not until months later before reappearances were finally made. Despite some vague understatements of what a difficult year it has been, it was as if nothing had happened. A turnaround in fortunes was even announced in the form of a financial surplus!!! … or at least, if not an actual financial surplus then a projected one… perhaps, if we just budget assuming we can double the number of students… fingers-crossed, everyone!
The University did not want to run a staff survey this year, so we ran one for them (see also results here in the way that People Survey results have previously been presented) and we will be sharing the anonymised, summarised results with senior managers. Some of the more positive opinions were around the importance and impact of the work that we do in our various roles, with the most positive opinions relating to our co-workers (>70% agreeing / strongly agreeing that they receive a good level of support from internal teams of colleagues, and that they are treated with respect by their line managers). This is not a surprise – solidarity and collegiality could not have been more evident this year. We saw many members volunteering for UCU rep training at short notice and amid busy schedules in response to heightened demand resulting from widespread restructures. Consequently, not a single UCU member who was placed at risk of redundancy had to face their 1-to-1 meetings alone and unsupported if they requested a representative to accompany them. A huge thank you to everyone who helped.
Much of the staff survey reflects a workforce understandably weary and disillusioned by the new management culture – overwhelmingly, people do not feel able to recommend their place of work to others, and report that their career prospects, work-life balance, safety, and dignity at work are not taken seriously. A significant extra question asked by the branch was, ‘If you were a manager the Executive Board were your staff member, what PDR rating would you give’. The answers were 1 (0%), 2 (3.3%), 3 (18%) and overwhelmingly 4 (78.7%). Therefore, only 3.3% of participants thought that the EB was meeting expectations, and nobody thought they were exceeding them. Unfortunately though, nobody thought that University will take positive action over the People Survey…
83% of staff disagree or strongly disagree that their views are taken into account when the university made significant decisions – only 3% gave a positive response to this question. Surrey consistently scores very low here and given the lack of significant positive action to redress the situation, nobody in charge seems to think it matters. Why do our Executive Board think that HE sector staff surveys (often delivered via external agencies catering for the sector), include questions like this?
It may not have dawned on our senior managers, but the question is not there because it is nice for staff to feel that their views are being heard, as if in a benevolent dictatorship where avuncular leaders pat themselves on the back if they have successfully created the illusion that the rank-and-file think they have been listened to, but where it doesn’t matter too much if they realise that they have not. It is there because better decisions are made in organisations that hold value in the opinions and ideas of ordinary staff.
As a Trade Union, this is the core of much of what we do because the University has a formal agreement in recognising Trade Unions and is supposed to negotiate with us on matters affecting staff. We reported last year of management failings to adhere to the principles of Union recognition, and a year later the situation has hardly improved. Most recently we learn, months after the project started, that the University of Surrey is intending to dissolve its Statutes (one of three high-level governance deeds that underpins the constitution of the University) – an action that will fundamentally change what the University is. It was not explained to us why the unions were informed of this long-term project only weeks before the documents were to be dispatched to the King’s Privy Council for what is an irrevocable change to the constitution of Surrey since it was founded nearly 60 years ago. In hoping that a change of such magnitude will not be to the detriment of the University and our colleagues, we would like to pin our hopes on those who gave a positive response for being able to trust our Executive Board to run the organisation effectively, except that nobody did – not a single positive response was received to this question in our staff survey (with 91% disagreeing / strongly disagreeing).
As a Trade Union, we should never give up on our efforts for improvement – for basic fairness and better working conditions. Such resolve and solidarity is needed now more than ever, in the aftermath of a year in which mismanagement by our Executive Board has led to unprecedented losses – to academic endeavours and resources across research, teaching and other areas of university activities, but most significantly losses of scores of valued colleagues. As if nothing had been learned from the disastrous “Continuous Improvement Programme” of 2018, it turns out that it is a bit of a problem to lose several centuries’ worth of expertise in one fell swoop. The chaos and uncertainty that remains, with increased workloads resulting from diminished teams and a “Seamless” Student Journey that is anything but, will have been felt by all of us who remain. The fallout from what has happened this year may cast a long shadow into the future.
2024 drew to a close with news that Max Lu will depart for the University of Wollongong in 2025 – we expect our counterparts there have been watching recent events at Surrey closely. The University Council will be responsible for recruiting a new Vice Chancellor next year and we hope we can hold confidence in them making a sound decision in appointing someone with an exemplary track record of positive and respectful staff relations, and in making governance and finance decisions that are a world more sensible than those we have witnessed under our current senior EB leaders.
Surrey UCU