The Human Condition

Preparations for the national research assessment to be undertaken in the UK are now well underway. As part of this exercise, it is necessary to provide some relief from the requirements to submit work for assessment. This relief is granted on the basis of personal circumstances that may have adversely affected the capacity to undertake research during the period under consideration. Some circumstances are 'well-defined', such as maternity leave, and attract a fixed discount, others are individual and must be separately determined. All of this must be done by institutions submitting themselves to the assessment in a way that respects the requirements of equal treatment and is auditable. Considerable amounts of funding rest on the outcomes of the larger assessment.

This bald statement covers in fact a complex process in which a very precise calculation of pain and personal difficulty is rendered, yielding a result which should, in theory, be reasonably comparable across institutions. I have been engaged in this process on behalf of my own institution. It is a responsibility that, frankly, I had not anticipated gaining much from. Just one of the things you do in an organisation. Unexpectedly however, I have gained from it some personal insight into what I might grandiosely term 'the human condition'.

Reviewing the individual cases, suitably anonymised, I was repeatedly struck by the hidden suffering of many colleagues. Illness, death of family members, disability, onerous caring responsibilities, sickness in children and tragic accidents. Such problems are rarely spoken about, in many cases the forms, setting out the circumstances, and submitted in confidence, represent the only disclosure of the information to the university. What was most striking was the often tentative, even, dare I say it, apologetic framing. A large proportion of the submissions placed emphasis on the fact that despite feeling required to disclose difficulties they had nevertheless succeeded in doing work that allowed a full submission.

I am sure that some of this is partially accounted for by a competitive, results focussed culture that characterises universities and, not unrelated to it, by the high proportion of driven achievement-oriented individuals that are drawn to research.  Another part is the deeply ingrained reticence of the British, and those who have adopted their manners and mores, that inhibits divulging what are viewed as  'private' matters.

The real revelation however, is simply the pain and difficulty quietly, stoically, borne. It is easy to assume that the personal life of colleagues is in some way like ones own. It is easy to project your own circumstances, capacities and resources onto others, an emotional 'heuristic', if you like. The lesson, for me at least, is to extend understanding and sympathy. Unkindness can be effected through a lack of consideration that can easily come to be a workplace norm. The bureaucracy of research assessment has unintentionally lifted a little corner of the fragile fabric that separates the personal and the professional.