Ask Dr. AJ: Departmental Financial Uncertainty & Workplace Bullying

Q1: My department is facing financial uncertainty due to the upheaval in the federal government these days. We were previously funded with core/base funds, but we’re now being expected to prove our value and find soft funding. How do I do that?

I’ve heard this one from a few people in the last year! With massive losses of funding from federal agencies such as NSF and NIH, universities and public agencies are struggling to keep afloat. This is especially common among IT and other infrastructure parts of those organizations - previously, your value was in providing services to support the work being done. Now, you also have to show that you are bringing in dollars.

One thing I’ve talked to folks about is starting to think about your department as its own business, rather than just a service provider. Start tracking everything, so you know what the return on investment (ROI) actually is on your various activities.

For example: Use a CRM/Jira/Kanban board to track the grant writing pipeline. This will allow you to easily pull up how much funding is in the pipeline, when to expect it, and who your collaborators are. It will also allow you to see patterns and gaps in collaboration - no projects in the works with Chemistry, Marketing, or the Center for Gender Studies? Now you know who to reach out to. Get creative.

Remind collaborators to give credit to your department when they publish papers, reports, etc. And make sure you return the favor! Here are some language examples for computing resource citations from Princeton, UVA, and CSC Finland.

Get comfortable talking about your value. Pull up department stats and practice answering questions about them. Get really familiar with your budget and be able to explain why every dollar is being spent the way it is. This is an essential skill even if you are not (yet!) in an upper leadership position.

If you are facing this issue and want a thought partner to process how to move forward, grab a 30 minute connection call with me and we’ll talk it through.

Q2: My coworker is trying to push me out. He makes passive aggressive comments when no one else is watching and aggressively tries to ”mentor” me, which just feels like he’s asserting dominance. He makes my life generally unpleasant as long as no one else is watching.

That doesn’t sound like mentoring - that sounds like bullying.

It’s time to start documenting. Every time you have a conversation with this person that makes you feel bad, send yourself an email (to both your personal and professional email addresses) that documents what was said, any context, and how it impacted you. It sounds like the comments are typically happening when no one else is around, so you might want to make an effort to have someone around when you are with this person. This can be as casual as just grabbing someone to ask them to join the meeting, or as formal as engaging a supervisor. This will either prevent the comments from happening, or may cause him to make a comment in front of another person, which will help you build your case.

I’m curious as to why it feels like he is trying to “push you out” - is he taking other actions aside from how he speaks to you in private? Taking credit for your work, keeping you out of projects, etc? Document any of this as well, including past examples if you can.

Once you’ve got some of this documentation in place, sit down with a supervisor, ombuds, or HR and let them know what is happening in your workday and the impact it is having on your emotional state and work. Hopefully they can guide you with next steps.

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