Drawn from Our Work in Higher Education
What Happens Next
In one Canadian university faculty we worked with, a department had been carrying unresolved tension for several years across two distinct but related fault lines. The department ran shared research infrastructure that required close operational coordination across its teams.
The first fault line involved a leader whose behaviour was experienced by several staff members as causing sustained harm. Individual complaints were made through the formal process over an extended period. Each was assessed on its own merits, against the threshold the process was designed to apply. None reached that threshold. When the leader transferred to another department, the formal processes were concluded and the file was closed.
The second involved hiring and tenure decisions that a number of faculty members, particularly those from racialized communities, experienced as discriminatory. The concerns had been raised informally. Staff reported that they had been acknowledged but not resolved.
The two fault lines had never been addressed together. Each had been managed separately, through separate processes, by separate parts of the institution. What staff were living with was the accumulated weight of both.
The teams were still fractured. Staff who had loved their work were considering leaving. People described being easily triggered by situations that reminded them of what they had been through. Relationships that staff described as having been set against each other had not repaired themselves just because the leader had moved on.
Almost every person who had engaged with the formal process reported that it had caused significant additional harm. Complaints had been assessed in isolation with no visible mechanism for recognizing a pattern. Counter-complaints were lodged, and staff experienced a difference in the speed and weight with which they were handled compared to the original complaints. The formal responses did not reflect what people had actually experienced. And throughout, the institution appeared to be managing its legal exposure as a primary concern, which is exactly what institutions are designed to do, and exactly what felt like abandonment to the people inside it.
We were not called in to re-investigate either situation. We were called in to do what the formal processes could never have done: give people a structured space to be heard by each other, to understand what had happened across the whole department rather than only their individual corner of it, and to reach a collective agreement about what needed to happen next.
The ProActive Restorative Conference produced something the formal processes could not. Commitments made by people to each other, in the room, with timelines and accountability they chose themselves.
A single discovery call with our team.
No commitment. No sales process. A direct conversation about your situation and whether we are the right fit.
A department head with a unit in acute distress does not need to wait for a centralized procurement process. If you have some discretionary budget and the judgment that something needs to happen soon, that is enough to start.
If we are the right fit, we will tell you what a restorative process looks like in your specific context, what it requires, and what it can realistically achieve.
Key Takeaways
What can I do when a workplace investigation concluded but my team is still not functioning?
A workplace investigation determines whether a specific allegation meets a formal threshold. It was not designed to repair what was damaged between people. A restorative process addresses that register of harm directly, and can begin once the formal process is complete.What is institutional betrayal?Psychologist Jennifer Freyd coined the term to describe the harm that occurs when an organization fails the people who trusted it, compounding the original injury. In universities, it most often appears when staff use formal complaints processes in good faith and find that those processes were calibrated to compliance rather than to their wellbeing. It is frequently what drives capable staff to consider leaving work they otherwise love.
What is the difference between a workplace investigation and a restorative process?
An investigation conducts fact-finding to determine whether a policy was breached. A restorative process addresses what was damaged in the space between people, which no finding can reach. They are not alternatives to each other. They address different registers of the same event.
Why did the formal complaints process not work even though the harm was real?
Most university complaints processes assess each complaint individually against a specific threshold. There is rarely a mechanism for recognizing a pattern of behaviour across multiple staff members over time. Complaints that look insufficient in isolation can represent, in aggregate, a clear and sustained picture of harm that the process was never designed to see.
Does ProActive work with universities outside Canada?
Yes. We have worked with universities and colleges across Australia, Canada, and the USA, and have experience across 32 countries. Our Australia and North America offices both serve higher education clients.