When the problem is power, traditional workplace systems often aren’t enough.
Colleges and universities are workplaces as well as learning communities.
Faculty, staff, researchers, administrators, graduate workers, and other employees can experience intimidation, humiliation, retaliation, exclusion, abuse of authority, mobbing, and other forms of psychologically harmful workplace behavior.
Yet many institutions are not designed to respond effectively when the behavior does not fit neatly within existing discrimination, harassment, Title IX, or workplace violence policies.
End Workplace Abuse helps higher education communities understand these gaps — and build stronger systems for preventing and responding to workplace abuse.
Bring End Workplace Abuse to your campus.
Why this conversation belongs on college campuses
Higher education has unique workplace power structures.
Tenure and promotion systems
Department chairs and deans
Faculty governance
Grant funding
Graduate advisor relationships
Contract and contingent employment
Professional reputation
Small academic fields where everyone knows everyone
These structures can create enormous power imbalances.
When harmful workplace behavior occurs, employees may find themselves moving between HR, faculty affairs, ombuds offices, unions, Title IX offices, supervisors, faculty senates, and institutional leadership — without any one system taking responsibility for the underlying problem.
Employees may be told that the behavior is:
- A personality conflict
- A communication problem
- A management style
- Interpersonal tension
- Incivility
- A performance issue
Sometimes it is.
Sometimes it is an abuse of organizational power.
Understanding the difference matters.
Campus programs + Keynotes from End Workplace Abuse
Programs and keynotes can be offered virtually or in-person and adapted for faculty, staff, graduate workers, students, administrators, or campus leadership.
When the Problem Is Power
Workplace Abuse, Retaliation, and Psychological Safety in Higher Education
Our core campus program examines how workplace abuse develops, why organizational systems often fail to stop it, and what employees and institutions can do differently.
Topics may include:
- Recognizing patterns of workplace abuse
- Power, status, and organizational vulnerability
- Retaliation and fear of reporting
- Mobbing and group dynamics
- How harmful behavior gets reframed as a performance problem
- The limits of traditional complaint systems
- Documentation and reporting
- Worker rights and leverage
- Psychological safety versus organizational silence
- Institutional accountability
- Prevention and early intervention
Leadership Power Literacy
What Leaders Need to Understand About Psychological Safety
Leadership behavior shapes whether employees speak up, stay silent, disengage, leave, or become targets.
This program helps administrators and organizational leaders examine how power operates inside workplace systems and how seemingly ordinary management practices can become mechanisms for fear, retaliation, or organizational silence.
Topics can include:
- Power asymmetry at work
- Psychological safety and employee voice
- Status-protective behavior
- Retaliation risk
- Performance management and abuse of authority
- Institutional betrayal
- Leadership accountability
- Early warning signals
- Creating systems employees can safely use
Before Your First Toxic Workplace
Helping Students Recognize Workplace Red Flags Before They Enter the Workforce
Students receive extensive preparation for getting jobs.
They receive far less preparation for understanding workplace power once they have one.
This program helps undergraduate and graduate students recognize workplace warning signs, understand basic employee rights, evaluate organizational culture, respond strategically to harmful behavior, and make more informed decisions about reporting, staying, negotiating, or leaving.
Topics may include:
- Workplace red flags
- Power and hierarchy
- Healthy versus unhealthy management
- Psychological safety
- Retaliation
- Documentation
- HR and organizational risk
- Employee rights
- Boundaries
- Questions to ask prospective employers
More than a speaker
A campus engagement can include more than one presentation.
End Workplace Abuse can work with institutions to create a larger campus conversation through:
- Faculty and staff workshops
- Leadership sessions
- Student programs
- Panel discussions
- Facilitated conversations
- Campus climate education
- Workplace psychological safety assessments
- Employee resource materials
- Post-program surveys
- Follow-up sessions
- Institutional consultation
Programs can also be structured as multi-campus initiatives or university-system partnerships.
Who can host a program?
Campus events can be sponsored or co-sponsored by:
- Women’s and gender centers
- Faculty senates
- Staff councils
- Ombuds offices
- Faculty affairs
- Employee resource groups
- Labor unions and faculty associations
- Social work programs
- Psychology departments
- Sociology departments
- Public health programs
- Business and leadership programs
- Women’s and gender studies departments
- Graduate worker organizations
- Student affairs
- Career centers
- Professional development offices
- University leadership
We encourage co-sponsored events that bring multiple campus constituencies into the conversation.
A systems approach to workplace abuse
End Workplace Abuse does not approach workplace abuse simply as a conflict between two people.
We examine the systems surrounding it.
Who has power?
Who is protected?
Who is believed?
What happens after someone reports?
Where does accountability sit?
What incentives encourage silence?
What happens when a complaint becomes a performance issue?
And what organizational structures could prevent harm earlier?
Our work focuses on both sides of workplace change:
Worker power and protection
Helping employees understand workplace dynamics, rights, reporting systems, documentation, options, and leverage.
Employer systems and accountability
Helping institutions strengthen leadership accountability, early intervention, reporting systems, investigations, remedies, transparency, and organizational safeguards.
A different conversation about psychological safety
Psychological safety is often discussed as whether employees feel comfortable sharing ideas.
We believe the conversation has to go further.
Employees must also be able to:
Raise concerns
Challenge powerful people
Report misconduct
Disagree with leadership
Identify risks
Ask for help
Participate in workplace systems
without reasonably fearing retaliation or professional harm.
That is a workplace accountability issue — not simply a culture issue.
About End Workplace Abuse
End Workplace Abuse is a national nonprofit organization working to protect workers’ right to psychological safety.
Our work focuses on worker education, organizational accountability, research, public awareness, and practical tools that help workers and employers address psychologically harmful workplace behavior.
We work toward a future in which workplace protections do not depend on an employee’s status, identity, job title, or ability to prove that abuse was motivated by discrimination.
Bring this conversation to your campus
Every campus is different.
We can work with your institution to design a program for faculty, staff, students, graduate workers, leadership, or the broader campus community.
Programs are available virtually and in-person.
To discuss a campus presentation, workshop, panel, or multi-campus partnership, contact End Workplace Abuse.