Two recent worrying reports about USW, but not worrying for the obvious reasons:
https://www.business-live.co.uk/opinion-analysis/university-south-wales-seen-alarming-31300796
AND
https://nation.cymru/news/staff-unhappy-with-leadership-of-the-university-of-south-wales/
The latter of which involved a leaked document related to the results of a recent staff survey. I’d actually asked myself if this raw data was public, as the document itself was marked by Office365 as “Public”; documents can be marked Confidential, which restricts access through encryption, and this option has certainly been used recently in relation to redundancies.
The answer I was given was that it was on a USW SharePoint site, so only for USW staff. However, as a Government funded body, USW like all universities in the UK, is subject to freedom of information legislation. There should be no confidentiality unless for a valid reason; FoI has exceptions in law, which is right and proper. While I acquiesced to the implicit “don’t share” reply I received, someone took the “public” tag on the document at face value, it seems.
What is weird about the Nation Cymru article is, firstly, their use of the term “leaked”, because it was a “public” document; the distribution of publicly funded information isn’t leaking. It is dissemination, which academics should thrive on.
The second concern is the “lecturer at the university who didn’t wish to be named” being quoted. I’m guessing here that it was this person who ‘leaked’ the document. The problem (and it can be seen two ways) is the ‘not wanting to be named’ bit, either because of the fear of reprisals – if they are found out this would compound matters – or the lack of taking responsibility. This is, of course, assuming that the sharing of public information is in fact misconduct?
I think, this unnamed lecturer should be able to make such comments freely, openly, and not be afraid of the consequences. The raw data is pretty damning, but the Nation Cymru coverage goes little further than the highlights disseminated in the official summary infographic distributed to staff on the USW Intranet, which gives the most positive spin on the better sides of the survey. This isn’t misrepresentation. There ARE some positives in staff attitudes captured by the survey. It just disappears when the questions relate to the leadership.
For me, the most important elements are very high levels of harassment being reported. For example, and this is eye opening, 80% of Executive responded to the survey – generally it was two thirds of workers in different categories – but 100% of them reported experiencing harassment. All of them.
There were other less than ideal nuggets, but (and this is the point of a staff satisfaction survey) we shouldn’t be afraid of the negatives. They allow us to address the problems, when often they are hidden otherwise; such as in an environment of fear, where people feel unable to speak out for fear of reprisals.
ENDS
* “The construction not only….but (also) is called a correlative conjunction. It is used to present two related pieces of information. Both pieces of information are being presented by the writer as surprising or unexpected, with the second one being even more surprising than the first.”
— https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/eb/qa/not-only-but-also
