Reporting point: power often a factor in integrity reports

Intimidation, bullying and problems between managers and employees. These themes are most prominent in the 85 reports received by the integrity and social safety reporting point over the past six months. Power, or the abuse thereof, often plays a role in these cases. At least 51 per cent of the reporters are women (not everyone answered this question). 13 % are PhD students, 13 % are postdocs and 13 % are students.

The reporting point has opened on 3 April 2025, just over a year after the Education Inspectorate found mismanagement at TU Delft: there was social unsafety and care for employees was not in order. In a highly critical report, the inspectorate described, among other things, how victims of undesirable behaviour lacked helplines. The reporting point was intended to help change this.

Issues from the (sometimes) distant past

Whether this has succeeded sufficiently will become clear later, for example when the reporting point publishes its first annual report. Or it will become clear from the annual reports of confidential advisors and ombudspersons.

For now, there are the facts and figures that the reporting point can share after its first six months. Delta spoke with two employees of the integrity office, which manages the reporting point. They are manager Olivier Sueur and advisor Juliette Heikens.

Of the 85 reports from that period, 63 have been closed and 22 are still open. New reports are added every week, with peaks when social unsafety is a news item. Many reports concern matters from the (sometimes distant) past. Slowly, a shift is occurring towards recent, ongoing cases.

Social unsafety is hard to ignore

The reporting point is there for social, organisational, and scientific integrity. Two-thirds of the reports fall into the social category, almost one-third into the organisational category, and a small remainder into the scientific integrity category.

Sueur and Heikens think there are a few reasons for this, like the fact that there are familiar helplines for scientific integrity issues (the Scientific Integrity Committee (CWI) and the scientific integrity confidential advisors). They also believe that violations of social integrity in particular affect people’s job satisfaction and are therefore difficult to ignore. Reporters are almost always employees and (as yet) relatively few students. Sueur and Heikens believe that the latter is partly due to a lack of awareness.

What happens after a report is made?

The processing time for a report is at least a month, they say. After the report is made, a confirmation, an intake interview, a written summary and approval of that summary by the reporter follow. A case is then completed most quickly if it results in an advice to the reporter themselves. This is a so-called “warm referral” to, for example, a confidential advisor. Warm means that the reporting point staff, with the reporter’s permission, contact the group or person to whom they are referring to.

Initially, this involved checking whether a report was indeed appropriate. Following an internal evaluation, this process has been modified. Heikens: “We now do this by actively contacting them (with permission), passing on the advice we have given and ensuring a direct line of contact to the relevant desk. We also inform people about what they can expect at this desk.” In the past six months, 25 of the 63 cases handled were warm referrals

The rest is discussed at the so-called interpretation table with experts from the organisation. It has met six times to discuss reports. These often concerned clusters of cases that occurred in the same place or showed the same pattern.

The rule of thumb is: ‘apply or explain’

In these cases, the clarifying table has given advice to so-called decision-makers. These are people who can or must restore calm within the organisation. Usually, these are immediate supervisors or managers higher up in the organisation, sometimes teachers (in the case of student reporters). Reporting point staff have discussed the advice with these decision-makers. The rule of thumb for decision-makers is “apply or explain”: they are expected to follow the advice of the clarifying table or explain why they will deviate from it.

Do all reporters get an intake, or are there also people with whom the reporting point has not proceeded? According to Heikens, the latter rarely occurs. Exceptions are people who put forward a story that does not belong with the reporting point, such as the time someone reported a lost passport. It also happens that after their first report on the secure SpeakUp reporting platform, reporters do not respond to contact requests from the reporting point. Heikens: “If, despite several reminders, there is no response, we cannot proceed and we have to close the report. The signal is still registered, however.”

No comparative data from other universities

TU Delft has more than 8,000 employees and 28,000 students. Is 85 reports a lot or a little? There is no comparative data from other universities. There are other reporting points, but they are structured differently: for example, they only refer cases on or are organised differently. Heikens therefore compares TU Delft with organisations in general and finds that the number of reports is comparable. “You can see the connection with what is happening in society. Those patterns are recognisable.”