Local paper investigates Wellbeing negligence at Oxford Brookes

Full article,

https://thetab.com/uk/brookes/2021/02/09/i-was-told-to-stop-being-dramatic-brookes-students-experiences-with-uni-wellbeing-26357

Excerpt:

“In 2018, I was diagnosed with cancer and was told I had to still attend lectures. I got an email whilst I was in ITU, saying that my attendance was too low,” said a Law LLB student in her second year, before she was forced to drop out.

"I was told that if I don’t turn up to exams, I will fail the course and lose accreditation. I had to use lawyers and my MP to get fees back because I dropped out but I was still charged.”

Reply 1

Anonymous #1

Original post by Akuma

Gosh!! Thanks for letting me know - I interview with them today 😳

Oxford Brookes University

Oxford

Reply 2

Geo55

the article

. “I spoke to an operator about my eating disorder, outlining how much it wasn’t just affecting my mental wellbeing, but deeply impacting simple daily tasks and obviously academic ones as well. They asked no more than two questions about it, like ‘how often’ or ‘since when’,” said student Caterina.

“Then, they questioned whether I had suicidal thoughts and the second I said no, they told me to visit the GP and hung up a few seconds later. Making that call was very hard for me, as I’ve always kept it a secret with everyone until then. I was devastated to feel like my problem wasn’t important enough.”

Ridiculous.

This is the tip of the iceberg. There is a systematic failure to deal with problem staff members at Oxford Brookes. People who are quite clearly unsuitable for the roles they are in are simply not dealt with. Instead, dissatisfied students are viewed as the problem. Students who raise issues such as this will suddenly find that staff they have never encountered before know who they are. There'll be muttered comments and dirty looks and zero support or help from anyone.

Reply 3

username874291

Notice how the statement from Brookes in the article doesn't even acknowledge the issue. They fall over themselves to investigate allegations of student misconduct yet where staff are concerned they seem totally incapable of even acknowledging a problem.

This from a former employee seems pretty spot on.

Toxic culture, bullying is not dealt with.

I worked at Oxford Brookes University full-time for more than 8 years

Pros

Nice campuses, the new buildings look good and have improved the space, flexible working hours, there are still a lot of good people who work at Brookes

Cons

Bullying is rife and nothing is done to address it. HR make the reporting process extremely difficult, protecting the people doing the bullying and persecuting the victims. Nothing is done with employees who are not producing results and are coasting. The promotion procedure is ridiculous with promotions handed out for political reasons and the people doing the hard work are unable to have any career progression. In every department and faculty there are political power plays that are detrimental to the well-being of staff. Staff that care and try to change things will be blocked from opportunities and will not have contracts renewed. The entire system is very negative and no one is prepared to be accountable for anything, therefore nothing gets changed without a lot of pain for all involved. There are multiple health and safety violations that are not taken seriously. Again, no accountability. Accidents and incidents are hushed up, are not reported to HSE or during health and safety inspections. IT showed some improvement but projects take way too long and the procedures set in place are onerous at best, dysfunctional at worst. EFM staff try their best and are hampered by very bad management. basic EFM mistakes have been made in all the new builds due to not listening to staff and value engineering out key components that have to be installed at a later date. Everyone knows who is responsible for some of these decisions and nothing is done to address it. Finance does not function and it seems that no one in finance knows what is going on. Academic staff are left to spend far too much time doing the job of finance, EFM, HR and everyone else, severely impacting on their job output. Complains and feedback is ignored, even the staff survey is glossed over and meetings to discuss the staff survey have senior members of staff arguing with staff and denying the realty of situations.

Advice to Management

Change the bullying procedures, report H&S violations, make people accountable for decisions and hold them to it with consequences for staff that bully or who are not meeting targets/agreements/deadlines. Listen to your staff. Have a proper communication system that feeds from the bottom up. Recognise how unhappy many people are and why so many long term staff are leaving/have left. Do something with the reports HR collect and the feedback they are given from departing staff. Be seen to be doing something other than endless meetings with other senior managers who have no interest in changing the status quo.

https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/Employee-Review-Oxford-Brookes-University-RVW25908873.htm

Not good.

Has the university taken any steps to address this? It doesn't seem so from the article. Perhaps the official uni rep on here could find out and let us know?

Reply 6

Anonymous #2

Quite shocking really.

Reply 7

Anonymous #3

This place sounds absolutely horrible

Reply 8

mathperson

Original post by Geo55

Same at Sheffield University.
Everything is good on the surface but if you need help, it's all about form filling and bureaucracy, with little meaningful action.

A few years ago the University of Sheffield was taken to court for trying to bully a student into changing his religion.
Search "Sheffield University court case" on Google or see the file I've attempted to attach.