My university offers a range of workshops to make its bureaucratic processes transparent for new employees. Before beginning the new term, I had to attend one on “dignity at work”. I had a vague sense of what this meant – challenging harassment and bullying, cultivating a respectful institutional culture – and was keen to hear more.

I was surprised to find this workshop delivered by an external private company for a corporate rate. The workshop leader said this would help create a neutral space immune from the self-interests of the university, where participants could speak freely about their experiences.

She began by asking us to suggest causes of harassment and bullying in the workplace, writing down a number of our suggestions on the white board. The two people of colour in the room suggested that racism might be one such cause. She agreed, but did not write it down. They raised it again. She skirted around the subject, avoiding writing the word “racism” on the board. I began to feel uneasy.

In the following exercise, the workshop leader asked participants, who were seated in a horseshoe, for their responses to a particular scenario. When she reached the two people of colour, sat on the far left, she swiftly decided that everything had been covered and they were not called upon. I was shocked and, as I could see, so were they. At the time I remained silent. I wanted to say something and wish that I had. I now realise that as a white person myself, I engaged in what US sociologist Robin DiAngelo calls “white solidarity”, a concept the workshop didn’t cover.

The main body of the workshop centred around a roleplay that lasted about an hour. A timid junior administrator, played by an actor who was a woman of colour, had to deal with a power-crazed academic, played by an actor who was white and male. Workshop participants were asked to advise the junior administrator on how best to cope with the academic, who became increasingly erratic and unpleasant.

This scenario exacerbated a latent animosity between administrative and academic staff. But this was nowhere near as bad as the way we were asked to observe a white man abuse a woman of colour – abuse that, though “acted”, became increasingly derogatory.

But the strangest part of the workshop was that the leader insisted that the junior administrator should avoid a formal complaints procedure. The “difficult” academic needed to be dealt with informally, and it was down to us, the workshop participants, to make suggestions as to how this might be achieved. I objected, stressing that she should absolutely pursue a formal complaint. When this option was refused, participants began to offer advice. This included asking the junior administrator to arrange meetings with the academic, use more assertive language, and even alter her body posture.

The result was pivot of all responsibility away from the white male academic, not to mention the institution itself, on to the junior staff member. The overarching message of the workshop was that employees should avoid pursuing formal complaints procedures or other institutional safety mechanisms at all costs, instead bearing the stresses of navigating – often gendered, often racialised – abusive relationships in the workplace themselves.

Feminist critic and writer Sara Ahmed has been analysing this kind of institutional failure for some time. As she writes on her blog: “To make a complaint is to learn how organisations and departments that appear on the surface to be committed to equality and progressive values turn out to be deeply hierarchical and traditional once you dig deeper.”

All of us, administrative and academic staff, should feel entitled to use the procedures put in place to protect us from workplace bullying and harassment. The paradox is that an institution committed to the expensive bureaucratisation and formalisation of workplace etiquette pays exorbitant rates for a corporate workshop, one that actively discourages its workers from making use of those exact processes.